The Digital Transformation Journey of a Large Australian Hospital: A Teaching Case

With the vision of a seamless, state-wide approach to patient management, the Department of Health within the Queensland State Government of Australia embarked on a digital transformation journey. This involved the configuration and rollout of an integrated electronic medical record system (ieMR) with computerized provider order entry, ePrescribing, decision support, analytics, and research functionalities, together with new devices and work practices, to create a multi-hospital, whole-of-state digital health ecosystem. Drawing on multiple perspectives, including executives and front-line clinicians who are both optimistic and pessimistic towards the ieMR, this teaching case describes the digital transformation of the lead site, Princess Alexandra Hospital, and their experience in becoming Australia’s first large digital hospital. This case has been informed by a multi-year qualitative study involving the collection of primary (observations and interviews) and secondary data (publicly available project records) before and after the implementation. This case is relevant to undergraduate and postgraduate students in information systems, executive management, and clinical/health informatics

Unconscious Awareness of a Branded Life: Consumer Disillusionment and the Cultivated Commercialization of Public Health

By unraveling the intricately powerful influences of pharmaceutical funding, this project examines ways in which product marketing infiltrates and contaminates public awareness efforts in the healthcare industry. Specifically, the following work deconstructs ways in which Merck Pharmaceuticals & Co. crafted a product endorsement through social marketing and nationwide lobbying efforts to most efficiently profit from the company’s Gardasil vaccination. Through means of textual analysis, interviews, focus groups, and eyetracking experimentation, I use Merck’s product endorsement efforts to illuminate the complex dynamics muddling direct-to-consumer marketing and social marketing campaigns. Social cognitive theory (SCT) offers a strong supportive foundation from which to dissect viewer healthcare message processing. In conjunction with the behaviorally-oriented cannons of SCT, social trust theory and contemporary marketing scholarship further highlight the complicated ties uniting public policy, corporatized health-marketing operations, audience cognitions, and consumer behavior. By piecing together the various ways in which Merck Pharmaceuticals puppeteered public understanding of HPV and cervical cancer, this work encourages greater awareness for the corporate influence and political agendas that work hand in hand in delivering meaning to American reality. Results indicate viewer awareness of brand markings in Merck’s HPV social marketing campaign limit message effectiveness and negatively influence consumer trust. As such, my grounded analysis conceptualizes “unconscious awareness” as it relates to branded health communication. Emergent findings showcase broader societal implications by unveiling patterns of conditioned ambivalence toward commercialized messaging. This project speaks to the capitalized communications contaminating consumer trust and public health, and presents an argument for regulation realignment in the healthcare industry. Given the sensitive nature of public health message processing, and in light of the findings collected throughout this work, my multi-layered analysis petitions for regulatory guidelines which separately address and more clearly define executional protocols for social awareness efforts and direct-to-consumer marketing operations

A comparative review of how the policy and procedures to assess research impact evolved in Australia and the UK

This article offers a systematic review of the evolution of research impact assessment in Australia and the UK. We consider its inception and detail the development of relevant policy and procedures in each country. The article sets out the results of a comparative analysis of public policy documents, newspaper commentary, and academic literature in both countries. We examined the differences and commonalities between the two nations, revealing evaluation criteria and uncovering justifications for the adoption of impact assessment. The article highlights the convergence and divergence of the two countries’ policy and procedures, as well as the political and bureaucratic contexts that have shaped their design and implementation. The article shows that the synergistic, intermittent, and iterative development of relevant policy and procedures in the two nations has been mutually beneficial for the evolution of retrospective impact assessment

U-Limb: A multi-modal, multi-center database on arm motion control in healthy and post-stroke conditions

BACKGROUND: Shedding light on the neuroscientific mechanisms of human upper limb motor control, in both healthy and disease conditions (e.g., after a stroke), can help to devise effective tools for a quantitative evaluation of the impaired conditions, and to properly inform the rehabilitative process. Furthermore, the design and control of mechatronic devices can also benefit from such neuroscientific outcomes, with important implications for assistive and rehabilitation robotics and advanced human-machine interaction. To reach these goals, we believe that an exhaustive data collection on human behavior is a mandatory step. For this reason, we release U-Limb, a large, multi-modal, multi-center data collection on human upper limb movements, with the aim of fostering trans-disciplinary cross-fertilization. CONTRIBUTION: This collection of signals consists of data from 91 able-bodied and 65 post-stroke participants and is organized at 3 levels: (i) upper limb daily living activities, during which kinematic and physiological signals (electromyography, electro-encephalography, and electrocardiography) were recorded; (ii) force-kinematic behavior during precise manipulation tasks with a haptic device; and (iii) brain activity during hand control using functional magnetic resonance imaging

PMO implementation in trinidad and tobago engineering-service contractor firms: challenges and lessons learned

This paper explores the challenges and lessons learned in integrating a project management office (PMO) into the existing organizational structure of engineering-service contractor (ESC) companies in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T). Although several T&T ESCs now boast of having a robust PMO, its implementation has been a difficult and expensive endeavor for most, persuading others to forego this. This disinclination is due to the lack of available insight and guidance on PMO implementation for ESCs operating in the Caribbean. Top management personnel and departmental managers from twenty-eight ESCs who played a direct role in the PMO incorporation at their organizations were polled in a self-report study which collected quantitative data via a questionnaire. Insights on their perceived PMO value, implementation weak and strong points, integration challenges and lessons learned were gathered and analyzed. The findings confirmed concurrence amongst all participating ESCs that PMO implementation bodes well for their strategic organizational goals. The biggest implementation challenges reported were creating a project management culture and realigning the power for resource management and allocation. Smoother integration was reported amongst companies that included suitable communication channels, pre-implementation planning, and project management training for PMO personnel into the process. For the findings varied across companies, this paper illustrates numerous areas of concern common to ESCs. There is no existing research on PMO implementation in T&T or Caribbean firms, and this paper provides foresight and direction for companies contemplating such endeavors