Distinguishing “mHealth” from Other Healthcare Services in a Developing Country: A Study from the Service Quality Perspective

Mobile phones’ exponential growth is fuelling the emergence of mobile health (mHealth), thus contributing to healthcare services’ innovative transformation in developing countries. mHealth’s ubiquitous personalised capabilities obviate the access barriers and dismal performance of conventional systems, therefore gaining popularity among patients. Researchers have focused on service quality―a vital element of service adoption―and sustainability. For mHealth to become a robust alternative, how patients perceive mHealth vis-à-vis conventional services must be understood. Comparative analysis studies between mHealth and conventional systems are scarce yet would contribute to theory and strengthen the antecedent phases to service quality, that is, design and operation. mHealth is a viable alternative for fulfiling the unmet goal of quality of life for all. Prompted by these insights, this study is the first attempt to discover the differentiating characteristics of mHealth. Patients’ perceptions were analyzed by multiple discriminant analysis, a classification technique. The findings show that, in distinguishing between healthcare services, mHealth is a favourable alternative: service differentiation occurs along the dimensions of ubiquity, information-quality, and value. The findings’ implications for theory and practice and future research guidelines are also discussed

Forum Session at the First International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC03)

The First International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC) was held in Trento, December 15-18, 2003. The focus of the conference ---Service Oriented Computing (SOC)--- is the new emerging paradigm for distributed computing and e-business processing that has evolved from object-oriented and component computing to enable building agile networks of collaborating business applications distributed within and across organizational boundaries. Of the 181 papers submitted to the ICSOC conference, 10 were selected for the forum session which took place on December the 16th, 2003. The papers were chosen based on their technical quality, originality, relevance to SOC and for their nature of being best suited for a poster presentation or a demonstration. This technical report contains the 10 papers presented during the forum session at the ICSOC conference. In particular, the last two papers in the report ere submitted as industrial papers

An Evaluation of Mobile-government Websites in Indonesia

This research evaluates 20 mobile-government websites in Indonesia based on the evaluation framework consists of four aspects, namely General Characteristics, E-Content, E-Services and E-Participation. Based on the evaluation result, all the mobile-government websites focus on e-content and e-participation. The content here is updated regularly especially about news and information, however the low e-services scores provide evidence that the content and e-participation provided are one-way communication method only. Mobilegovernment implementation in Indonesia seems still in the first stage of e-government development model. Most of the mobile webs are only informational. It is suggested to improve and develop further to reach the transactional level where all the services are integrated

Private Enterprise for Public Health: Opportunities for Business to Improve Women's and Children's Health

This guide, developed by FSG and published by the Innovation Working Group in support of the global Every Woman, Every Child effort, explores how companies can create shared value in women's and children's health. The document sets out opportunities for multiple different industries to develop new product and services, improve delivery systems and strengthen health systems that can support global efforts to save 16 million women's and children's lives between now and 2015. It particularly notes that companies need not wait for health services to "catch up" with their economic model, but rather they can work proactively to help accelerate change, by partnering with other industries, civil society and the public sector to create collective impact in a specific location. The aim of the guide is to catalyze these transformative partnerships

Learning in an age of digital networks

The final years of the twentieth century and early years of the twenty first century have been marked by the rapid rise of digital and networked technologies. Some have even called it a paradigm shift and suggested that it will lead to a dramatic change in the way young people learn (Tapscott and Williams, 2010). As with all commentary on new technologies we should beware of being carried away with the excitement of the new. There is a recurrent innovation cycle beginning with over excitement followed by disappointment and once the reaction has set in against the new it is followed by a move away to yet another new technology, often before a proper assessment and evaluation of the previous cycle can take place. Equally we must be careful not to ignore the profound changes that are taking place and how they may affect universities and learning in society more generally. A recent description by a UK based think tank Demos characterized the kind of university that is emerging from the engagement with new digital and networked technologies as the 'edgeless university' (Bradwell, 2009). The term edgeless is borrowed from work on the city that suggests edgeless cities have the function of cities without being organized in their classic form. In the same way the Demos pamphlet suggests that the university retains an identifiable function but the functions of the university are no longer confined to a single institution nor are they confined to higher education institutions more broadly. Over a decade ago Brown and Duguid (2000) identified the core functions of universities as the capacity to grant degrees, to accredit students and to provide the warrant that guaranteed the credentials obtained by the students from the university. They also suggested that the introduction of what were then new technologies would lead to an increased focus on these core functions. The core role remains in the edgeless university but the boundaries to these may alter. This article tries to provide a way of thinking about new technologies that manages to balance these two conflicting needs. It identifies some current ways of thinking about the changes taking place in universities that are related to digital and networked technologies and to assess their impact. It then goes on to suggest the kinds of choices we may have to make in relation to new technologies at a variety of levels, the personal, the institutional and in terms of society in general. The edgeless university is associated with broad technological change but whether such change is inevitable is still an issue that needs to be discussed

The Digitalisation of African Agriculture Report 2018-2019

An inclusive, digitally-enabled agricultural transformation could help achieve meaningful livelihood improvements for Africa’s smallholder farmers and pastoralists. It could drive greater engagement in agriculture from women and youth and create employment opportunities along the value chain. At CTA we staked a claim on this power of digitalisation to more systematically transform agriculture early on. Digitalisation, focusing on not individual ICTs but the application of these technologies to entire value chains, is a theme that cuts across all of our work. In youth entrepreneurship, we are fostering a new breed of young ICT ‘agripreneurs’. In climate-smart agriculture multiple projects provide information that can help towards building resilience for smallholder farmers. And in women empowerment we are supporting digital platforms to drive greater inclusion for women entrepreneurs in agricultural value chains

Information provision and retrieval in the farming industry in Western Australia

Agricultural information dissemination to farmers has been studied extensively. However, farmers preferred methods of delivery has not been investigated thoroughly within a Western Australia (WA) context. Availability of different information delivery channels have led to the overwhelming and overlapping of information available to farmers. As a consequence, the type of information required by WA farmers should be considered as knowing information needs could allow farmers to access relevant, concise and timely agricultural information. To answer the research questions, a survey was designed, using Likert-scale, close ended and open ended questions techniques, enabling qualitative and quantitative data analysis. The study‘s findings are relevant to agricultural information providers, government and public agencies, and other researchers who work in the agricultural and farming industries in Western Australia, and Australia

ACUTA Journal of Telecommunications in Higher Education

In This Issue President\u27s Message From the ACUTA CEO Advertiser Index Cables and the Cloud Snapshot: Spending Update High Expectations for the Campus Network NMSU Builds a Better VoIP LAN Harvard Turns to Technology for Teacher Evaluations Online Education: Interesting but Not Transformational? Campus Innovation and the lnternet of Things Face lt...Google Glass ls Coming Your Way Bandwidth 101 2013 lnstitutional Excellence Awar