Evaluating Integration Approaches Benefits Adopted by Healthcare Organizations

Healthcare organizations consist of a large number of disparate information systems (IS). These have been deployed to support specific needs of healthcare organisations. The information sharing among these disparate and heterogeneous systems has always been one of the most prominent issues for the management. As every day people die in hospitals, due to medical errors, which is generally causes due to non-integrated IT infrastructure. Various integration approaches have been adopted to solve integration problems. Although, some of them have partially supported the integration efforts, there are still many issues remaining to be solved such as level of integration, interpretability, cost reduction, and patients’ data security. There is marketplace confusion in healthcare organisations, due to the variety of integration approaches that support the integration of healthcare IS. This paper seeks to describe the current deployed integration approaches in healthcare organisations. In doing so, the benefits of these approaches are evaluated. This evaluation will help researchers to better understand issues surrounding the benefits of integration approaches

Patient Lifecycle Management: An Approach for Clinical Processes

Clinical processes can be described, inside the Biomedical scope, like a systematic guideline to assist practitioner and patient decisions about appropriate health care for specific clinical circumstances. In industry, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is the process of managing the entire lifecycle of a product from inception, through engineering design and manufacture, to service and disposal of manufactured products. Applying the concepts of PLM to Biomedical processes we create a synergy between the product’s concept in the industrial case and the patient into the health care environment. This point of view improves the actual clinical processes with a most specific treatment for each patient, by modifying the statements to assist the patient according to the needs of the patient and his illness. This research proposal tries to shift the focus of the eHealth systems onto the patient, adapts the existing and defined clinical processes or clinical paths to the patient’s needs, applies Big Data principles to bring even more attentions for the patient, and provides an easy to use system for the medical staff.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013-46928-C3-3-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2014-52382-

Synergy between medical informatics and bioinformatics: facilitating genomic medicine for future health care

Medical Informatics (MI) and Bioinformatics (BI) are two interdisciplinary areas located at the intersection between computer science and medicine and biology, respectively. Historically, they have been separated and only occasionally have researchers of both disciplines collaborated. The completion of the Human Genome Project has brought about in this post genomic era the need for a synergy of these two disciplines to further advance in the study of diseases by correlating essential genotypic information with expressed phenotypic information. Biomedical Informatics (BMI) is the emerging technology that aims to put these two worlds together in the new rising genomic medicine. In this regard, institutions such as the European Commission have recently launched several initiatives to support a new combined research agenda, based on the potential for synergism of both disciplines. In this paper we review the results the BIOINFOMED study one of these projects funded by the E

Framework for overcoming barriers of complementary and alternative medicine acceptance into conventional healthcare system

Health disparities have been widely recognized as a problem throughout the world. This paper provided a strengthened collaborative virtual framework for overcoming barriers towards accepting complementary and alternative medical practice into conventional healthcare system. Quantitative and qualitative data were gathered with semi-structured questionnaires and interviews from General Practitioners (GPs) with Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) knowledge, CAM Practitioners with biomedicine knowledge, CAM patients, and scholars. 2,760 semi-structured questionnaires exploring knowledge, attitudes, and skills’ barriers to integrative medical collaboration efforts were administered. Focus group discussions were held interviewing GPs, CAM practitioners, and others claiming effective prescriptions. Practitioners’ team meetings, retreats, interaction, and prescription operations were observed. In this study, a videoconferencing-based healthcare services delivery system was developed and implemented for seamless exchange of healthcare information. 2,591 (93.5%) questionnaires representing 657 physicians (23.80%), 997 CAM practitioners (36.12%), 855 patients (30.98%), and 82 healthcare researchers (2.97%) responded, while 169 (6.12%) declined response. Fifty-two percent of the 657 GPs still referred patients for CAM treatments. Patients found complementary approaches more aligned with “their own values, beliefs, and philosophical orientations”. Non-medical acceptance of CAM (43.27%) continued impeding CAM growth in Nigeria. CAM practitioners require evidence-based knowledge towards finding solutions and suggestions for seamlessly integrating CAM with modern healthcare practices. Key words: Collaboration, complementary and alternative medicine, integrated delivery system, videoconferencing

User involvement in healthcare technology development and assessment: Structured literature review

Purpose – Medical device users are one of the principal stakeholders of medical device technologies. User involvement in medical device technology development and assessment is central to meet their needs. Design/methodology/approach – A structured review of literature, published from 1980 to 2005 in peer-reviewed journals, was carried out from social science perspective to investigate the practice of user involvement in the development and assessment of medical device technologies. This was followed by qualitative thematic analysis. Findings – It is found that users of medical devices include clinicians, patients, carers and others. Different kinds of medical devices are developed and assessed by user involvement. The user involvement occurs at different stages of the medical device technology lifecycle and the degree of user involvement is in the order of design stage > testing and trials stage > deployment stage > concept stage. Methods most commonly used for capturing users’ perspectives are usability tests, interviews and questionnaire surveys. Research limitations/implications – We did not review the relevant literature published in engineering, medical and nursing fields, which might have been useful. Practical implications – Consideration of the users’ characteristics and the context of medical device use is critical for developing and assessing medical device technologies from users’ perspectives. Originality/value – This study shows that users of medical device technologies are not homogeneous but heterogeneous, in several aspects, and their needs, skills and working environments vary. This is important consideration for incorporating users’ perspectives in medical device technologies. Paper type: Literature review

European health research and globalisation: is the public-private balance right?

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The creation and exchange of knowledge between cultures has benefited world development for many years. The European Union now puts research and innovation at the front of its economic strategy. In the health field, biomedical research, which benefits the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, has been well supported, but much less emphasis has been given to public health and health systems research. A similar picture is emerging in European support for globalisation and health</p> <p>Case studies</p> <p>Two case-studies illustrate the links of European support in global health research with industry and biomedicine. The European Commission's directorates for (respectively) Health, Development and Research held an international conference in Brussels in June 2010. Two of six thematic sessions related to research: one was solely concerned with drug development and the protection of intellectual property. Two European Union-supported health research projects in India show a similar trend. The Euro-India Research Centre was created to support India's participation in EU research programmes, but almost all of the health research projects have been in biotechnology. New INDIGO, a network led by the French national research agency CNRS, has chosen 'Biotechnology and Health' and funded projects only within three laboratory sciences.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>Research for commerce supports only one side of economic development. Innovative technologies can be social as well as physical, and be as likely to benefit society and the economy. Global health research agendas to meet the Millenium goals need to prioritise prevention and service delivery. Public interest can be voiced through civil society organisations, able to support social research and public-health interventions. Money for health research comes from public budgets, or indirectly through healthcare costs. European 'Science in Society' programme contrasts research for 'economy', using technical solutions, commercialisation and a passive consumer voice for civil society, compared with research valuing 'collectivity', organisational and social innovations, open use, and public accountability.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>European policy currently prioritises health research in support of industry. European institutions and national governments must also support research and innovation in health and social systems, and promote civil society participation, to meet the challenges of globalisation.</p

Synergistic growth factor microenvironments

Growth factors (GF) are remarkably powerful signalling molecules that orchestrate developmental biology. GFs are currently used in medjcal applications with limited success but it is clear that if their potential can be harnessed for biomedicine then they could underpin the discipline of regenerative medicine. However, while we understand that biology uses cell-secreted growth factors tethered to the ECM, biologists typically employ GFs in soluble format at high concentrations. When used in vivo, this causes off-target, unwanted effects, which severely limits their use. There is a vast amount of literature dealing with material systems that control the delivery of GFs. However, it was soon observed that GFs could be more effectively presented bound to surfaces from a solid-phase state rather than in soluble form, recapitulating the way the extracellular matrix (ECM) binds GFs. In parallel, evidence was found that within the ECM, GFs can actually work in cooperation with integrins and that this produced ehnaced GF signalling due to the crosstalk between both receptors. Recently this knowledge was used to engineer microenvironments that target simultaneous integrin and GF receptor engagement seeking to maximise GF effects in vitro (e.g. in terms of stem cell differentiation) but also tissue repair in vivo (e.g. bone regeneration and wound healing). This feature article introduces the concept of synergistic GF/integrin signalling and then introduces GF delivery systems that were key in the development of more advanced synergistic growth factor microenvironments

Putting Value on Extracellular Vesicles : Practical Economies of Biomedical Research and Development

Several studies over the years have paid attention to the entanglement of biomedical research and the multiplicity of expectations for scientific breakthroughs and economic gains. However, science and economy are by no means the only values attributed to the biomedical endeavour in an actual R&D project. In this article, we present an analysis of a case we studied in Finland, in which academic and commercial partners jointly studied minuscule extracellular vesicles (EVs) to develop related technologies and explore their commercialisation potential. Thus, we ask, what is the spectrum of value in biomedical R&D? Our analysis highlights that in the rapidly developing, but still immature, scientific field of EVs, the dominant value of the research project are related to the expansion of future possibilities (e.g., funding and collaborations) and the sustainability of research. The subject of our study is a new domain of biomedicine that is quite unexplored in science and technology studies (STS), and our findings contribute to ongoing discussions on valuation and economies related to biomedical R&D. We focus on the multiplicity of value, and, by doing this, critically discuss the mainstream view emphasising the dominance of commercial value.Peer reviewe