Smart e-Health System for Real-time Tracking and Monitoring of Patients, Staff and Assets for Healthcare Decision Support in Saudi Arabia

Healthcare in Saudi Arabia has been lagging behind the developed countries of the world, due to the insufficient number of healthcare practitioners and the lack of applications of tracking and monitoring technology. These shortages have contributed to problems such as patient misidentification, long patient waiting times, and the inability to locate medical equipment efficiently. The country’s Vision 2030 plan outlines ways to solve the deficient workforce problem by promoting more local health-related educational outlets, and by funding this expanding sector. Consequently, Saudi Arabia needs to adapt to the demanding nature of modern healthcare, which presents major problems that this research aims to help solve. The literature has shown that Information Technology systems have begun to be implemented in some hospitals across Saudi Arabia, but even in those hospitals these technologies are being under-utilised. The intention of this thesis is to provide an appropriate choice for a real-time tracking and monitoring technology in healthcare, in the form of an integrated RFID/ZigBee system. This thesis develops a holistic framework for healthcare institutions, to be followed for customised solutions in improving staff efficiency and productivity, and for better patient care, while minimising long-term costs. This holistic framework incorporates contextual elements from both the Information System Strategy Triangle (ISST) and the Human, Organisation and Technology-fit factors (HOT-fit) frameworks, in a way that ensures the new framework addresses technology, organisational, human and business factors. The holistic model is refined through Communities of Practice (CoPs), one of which was developed and utilised for the research purposes of this thesis, and assisted in the creation of a questionnaire for assessing the requirements and challenges of the KSA healthcare system. This questionnaire was based on 220 usable responses. It also helped to refine the framework for its final version, which included all identified factors relevant to the decision a healthcare institution faces in choosing a health information technology system. Various cases were analysed to improve the hospitals workflow, using the proposed technology and including processes such as relocating staff and medical assets. This led to the need for visualisation and knowledge management, to support real-time data analysis for business intelligence decision making. The end goal of this analysis is to provide interactive platforms to healthcare staff for use in improving efficiency and productivity. The outcomes of these improvements will be to ensure better patient care, lower patient waiting time, reduced healthcare costs, and to allow more time for staff to provide improved patient-centric care in the Saudi healthcare sector. Keywords: e-Health, Health Information Technology, Tracking and Monitoring System, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Holistic Framework, Communities of Practice, Knowledge Management, Visualisation, KFM

Knowledge and Management Models for Sustainable Growth

In the last years sustainability has become a topic of global concern and a key issue in the strategic agenda of both business organizations and public authorities and organisations. Significant changes in business landscape, the emergence of new technology, including social media, the pressure of new social concerns, have called into question established conceptualizations of competitiveness, wealth creation and growth. New and unaddressed set of issues regarding how private and public organisations manage and invest their resources to create sustainable value have brought to light. In particular the increasing focus on environmental and social themes has suggested new dimensions to be taken into account in the value creation dynamics, both at organisations and communities level. For companies the need of integrating corporate social and environmental responsibility issues into strategy and daily business operations, pose profound challenges, which, in turn, involve numerous processes and complex decisions influenced by many stakeholders. Facing these challenges calls for the creation, use and exploitation of new knowledge as well as the development of proper management models, approaches and tools aimed to contribute to the development and realization of environmentally and socially sustainable business strategies and practices

Epidemiology of Injury in English Women's Super league Football: A Cohort Study

INTRODUCTION: The epidemiology of injury in male professional football has been well documented (Ekstrand, Hägglund, & Waldén, 2011) and used as a basis to understand injury trends for a number of years. The prevalence and incidence of injuries occurring in womens super league football is unknown. The aim of this study is to estimate the prevalence and incidence of injury in an English Super League Women’s Football squad. METHODS: Following ethical approval from Leeds Beckett University, players (n = 25) signed to a Women’s Super League Football club provided written informed consent to complete a self-administered injury survey. Measures of exposure, injury and performance over a 12-month period was gathered. Participants were classified as injured if they reported a football injury that required medical attention or withdrawal from participation for one day or more. Injuries were categorised as either traumatic or overuse and whether the injury was a new injury and/or re-injury of the same anatomical site RESULTS: 43 injuries, including re-injury were reported by the 25 participants providing a clinical incidence of 1.72 injuries per player. Total incidence of injury was 10.8/1000 h (95% CI: 7.5 to 14.03). Participants were at higher risk of injury during a match compared with training (32.4 (95% CI: 15.6 to 48.4) vs 8.0 (95% CI: 5.0 to 10.85)/1000 hours, p 28 days) of which there were three non-contact anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries. The epidemiological incidence proportion was 0.80 (95% CI: 0.64 to 0.95) and the average probability that any player on this team will sustain at least one injury was 80.0% (95% CI: 64.3% to 95.6%) CONCLUSION: This is the first report capturing exposure and injury incidence by anatomical site from a cohort of English players and is comparable to that found in Europe (6.3/1000 h (95% CI 5.4 to 7.36) Larruskain et al 2017). The number of ACL injuries highlights a potential injury burden for a squad of this size. Multi-site prospective investigations into the incidence and prevalence of injury in women’s football are require

Digital marketing, elements of the public sector competition value chain in Barranquilla, (Colombia)

La organización en la actualidad están obligadas a generar mayores beneficios a sus consumidores para lograr mayor posicionamiento en el mercado, eso depende del manejo de factores de competitividad internos y externos que predominan en las organizaciones medianas en el sector de la publicidad digital en Barranquilla. El objetivo de esta investigación fue describir el marketing digital del sector publicitario. La investigación es descriptiva con diseño no experimental y transversal. La muestra estuvo conformada por 15 empresas, cumpliendo los criterios: Empresa mediana, con departamento de Marketing digital, domiciliada en Barranquilla. Los resultados fueron descripción el marketing digital del sector publicitario, de acuerdo a los factores internos y externos en estas empresas presentan donde existe una consistencia moderada en la dinámica de respuesta de la empresa ante factores externos y viceversa. Se concluyó que las empresas de este sector requieren de estrategias que promuevan el desarrollo de los indicadores internos de competitividad que respondan a los factores cambiantes externo.The organization is currently forced to generate greater benefits to its consumers to achieve greater market positioning, that depends on the management of internal and external competitiveness factors that predominates in medium-sized organizations in the digital advertising sector in Barranquilla. The objective of this research was to describe the digital marketing of the advertising sector. The research is descriptive with non-experimental and transversal design. The sample was composed by 15 companies, fulfilling the criteria: Medium company, with department of Digital Marketing, placed in Barranquilla. The results were a description digital marketing of the advertising sector, according of the internal and external factors in these companies present where there is a moderate consistency in the dynamics of the company’s response to external factors and vice versa. It was concluded that companies in this sector have difficulties in strategies that promote the development of internal competitiveness indicators that respond to changing external factors