The status of IT service management in health care - ITIL® in selected European countries

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Due to the strained financial situation in the healthcare sector, hospitals and other healthcare providers are facing an increasing pressure to improve their efficiency and to reduce costs. These trends challenge health care organizations to introduce innovative information technology (IT) based supportive processes. To guarantee that IT supports the clinical processes perfectly, IT must be managed proactively. However, until now, there is only very few research on IT service management especially on ITIL^®implementations in the health care context.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The current study aims at exploring knowledge about and acceptance of IT service management (especially ITIL^®) in hospitals in Austria and its neighboring regions Bavaria (Germany), Slovakia, South Tyrol (Italy) and Switzerland. Therefore highly standardized interviews with the respective head of information technology (CIO, IT manager) were conducted for selected hospitals from the different regions. In total 75 hospitals were interviewed. Data gathered was analyzed using descriptive statistics and where necessary methods of qualitative content analysis.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In most regions, two-thirds or more of the participating IT managers claim to be familiar with the concepts of IT service management and of ITIL^®. IT managers expect from ITIL^®mostly better IT services, followed by an increased productivity and a reduction of IT cost. But only five hospitals said to have implemented at least parts of ITIL^®, and eight hospitals stated to be planning to do this in the next two years. When it comes to ITIL^®, Switzerland and Bavaria seem to be ahead of the other countries. There, the highest levels of knowledge, the highest number of implementations or plans of an implementation as well as the highest number of ITIL^®certified staff members were observed.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The results collected through this study indicate that the idea of IT services and IT service management is still not widely recognized in hospitals in the countries and regions of the study. It is also indicated that hospitals need further assistance in order to be able to successfully implement ITIL^®. Overall, research on IT service management and ITIL^®in health care is rare.</p

Usage and acceptance of drone technology in healthcare : exploring patients and physicians perspective

Modern technologies such as virtual reality, robots or drones are getting more and more important for organizations. Accordingly, the question arises in which industries these technologies can make a difference. This paper examines the use of drones in Swiss hospitals. A literature review is conducted outlining the most relevant flied of application for drone usage in healthcare. These use cases are then qualitatively rated by employees and patients of hospitals from different regions in Switzerland. Among others, the analysis revealed that employees and patients have strong concerns about drone usage in the hospital environment in the case drones provide diagnosis capabilities, but show less doubts if drones are used for delivery processes

IT in health care : a business enabler?

Information processing in health care demands reliable, relevant, systematic, integrated, and managed data throughout care delivery. This leads, even with IT, to increased and time-consuming activities and can cause potentially dangerous situations for the patient as important data may not be available when needed, which in turn can lead to wrong diagnostic or therapeutic decisions. Consequently, hospital IT executives must balance many competing priorities. These endeavours require, in addition to the appropriate utilisation of given IT resources, a farsighted alignment of IT issues with objectives, and a thorough understanding of uncertainties and legal obligations. This approach to integrated IT governance, IT risk management, and IT compliance (IT GRC) in the hospital Environment is the subject of the work presented here. This investigation is associated with a survey that has been conducted in 2009 and allows therefore drawing conclusions on the progress of IT GRC management in Swiss hospitals over the last 5 years. The findings revealed that IT GRC in health care is still all too often seen as the realm and sole responsibility of the CIO and the IT department. The findings proved that IT GRC has not been utilised sufficiently by the executive management of many hospitals, especially the public ones. The findings revealed the reasons for a less pervasive spread of managed IT GRC can be structured into four main categories representing the greatest barriers to a successful convergence of integrated IT GRC

How small and medium enterprises can begin their implementation of ITIL?

La secuenciación de los procesos de la Biblioteca de Infraestructura de Tecnologías de Información (ITIL) en cuanto a su orden de implementación es un aspecto no abordado en sus libros. Otros marcos de trabajo y modelos de proceso relativos a la gestión de servicios (p.ej., COBIT, COSO y CMMI-SVC) son sufi cientemente explicados en la literatura y en sus libros guía. Sin embargo, la identifi cación del primer proceso a implementar no ha sido analizada en produndidad en los marcos de trabajo y modelos anteriores, y es también una pregunta difícil de contestar por las organizaciones, especialmente por las pequeñas y medianas empresas (PYMEs). Las PYMEs son organizaciones que tienen una abrumadora presencia en la economía mundial; los datos ofi ciales del Directorio Central de Empresas muestran que su rango de presencia en diferentes países alrededor del mundo es entre el 93% y el 99% del total de empresas legalmente registradas, y el promedio de contribución al empleo es alrededor del 60%. En consecuencia, la mejora de la gestión de servicios de tecnología de la información en este tipo de empresas es un asunto imperativo de lograr. Esta investigación se ha enfocado en dos estudios cuyo objetivo es ayudar a las PYMEs a seleccionar el proceso de ITIL por el que podrían comenzar a implementar ITIL. En el primer estudio, los datos fueron recogidos mediante una encuesta aplicada a PYMEs registradas en la Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid. El segundo obtuvo datos de empresas y expertos de países como España, Ecuador, Luxemburgo, Chile, Colombia, Noruega, El Salvador y Venezuela. Finalmente, los resultados de ambos estudios muestran que la tendencia para iniciar una implementación ITIL en las PYMEs apunta a uno de los procesos incluidos en la Operación del Servicio. ---------- ABSTRACT---------- Sequencing of Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) processes related to their order of implementation is one of the pending issues in the ITIL handbooks. Other frameworks and process models related to service management (e.g., COBIT, COSO and CMMI-SVC) are quite well described in the literature and their handbooks. However, the identifi cation of the fi rst process to be implemented has not been deeply analysed in the previous frameworks and models, and it is also a complex question to answer for organizations, especially Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Moreover, SMEs are the organizations that have the largest presence in the world economy; offi cial data of General Business Directory, show that their range of presence in different countries around the world is between 93% and 99%, and the average of employment contribution is around 60%. Consequently, the improvement of information technology service management is of vital importance to accomplish in this type of enterprises. This research has focused on two surveys that aim at helping SMEs to select the ITIL process by which starting the implementation of ITIL. In the fi rst survey, data were gathered through a questionnaire to SMEs registered in the region of Madrid. The second survey obtained data from experts and enterprises in countries as Spain, Ecuador, Chile, Luxembourg, Colombia, Norway, El Salvador, and Venezuela. Finally, the results of both surveys show that the tendency for starting an ITIL implementation in SMEs points to one of the processes included in the Service Operation

A framework for the adoption of bring your own device (BYOD) in the hospital environment

The concept of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) – the use of a personally owned device in a working environment – is all over the place, nobody talks about it but many are using it. To find out the state of the art of BYOD in Swiss hospitals, an intense literature research revealed a research gap in the combination of BYOD and healthcare related topics. Six hospitals in Switzerland were examined, were questioned about their IT organization and services as well as their usage of mobile devices with a special focus on BYOD. As the Swiss hospital system is organized in a federalist way – much alike the Swiss state structure – it was to no surprise that the results among the study sites varied quite a bit. BYOD is used in many ways and for a mature implementation of BYOD, an EMM solution is crucial

Facing Business-IT-Alignment in Healthcare

The ongoing reform efforts and an aftermath of increasing regulation in the Swiss healthcare sector make it imperative for hospitals to develop strategies to work more efficiently and have better control over their medical, nursing, and administrative processes. These endeavors make hospitals to enhance and integrate concepts of Business-IT-Alignment and IT Governance, IT Risk management, and IT Compliance (IT GRC). This paper proposes a novel method for the management of IT with respect to closely-meshed organizational and social structures within hospitals. One key contribution of this method is its hybrid approach to combine collective know-how of the CObIT 5 framework with an iterative process model approach. The application of this method under real-world conditions within different Swiss hospitals has led to a positive outcome whereby all hospitals concurred that the method allows for the adoption of IT GRC principles while taking into consideration the individual styles and patterns of behavior

Proposal of a capacity management policy for information technology company according to ITIL requirements

[EN] Today, businesses depend heavily on Information Technology (IT) and enterprises or organizations need good IT service management to be competitive. Therefore, the discipline of "IT Service Management" and frameworks such as ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) arises. However, the implementation of ITIL is complex, and is necessary to move some theoretical concepts to the real situation, establishing objectives, scope and policies of each of the proposed processes. This paper aims to propose a policy for the process of Capacity Management in a provider of IT services, so that it can be used by companies such features as a basis for their policies Capacity Management in relation to ITIL.[ES] Hoy en día, los negocios dependen en gran medida de las Tecnologías de la Información (TI) y las empresas u organizaciones necesitan una buena gestión de servicios de TI para ser competitivas. Por ello, surge la disciplina de la ¿Gestión de Servicios de TI¿ y marcos de referencia como ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library). Sin embargo, la aplicación de ITIL es compleja, y es necesario trasladar algunos conceptos teóricos a la situación real, estableciendo objetivos, alcance y políticas de cada uno de los procesos propuestos. El presente trabajo tiene como objetivo proponer una Política para el proceso de Gestión de la Capacidad en una empresa proveedora de servicios de TI, de forma que pueda ser utilizada por empresas de esas características como base para establecer sus políticas de Gestión de la Capacidad en relación con ITIL.Pastor-Serranoi FJ; Oltra Badenes, RF. (2015). Propuesta de política de gestión de capacidad para una compañía de tecnologías de la información de acuerdo con los requerimientos de ITIL. 3C TIC, cuadernos de desarrollo aplicados a las TIC. 4(1):1-12. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/94994S1124

Gestión de la calidad de servicios apoyados en la aplicación del estándar ITIL

[EN] The modern world has led companies to become increasingly competitive, highlighting the customer as the core element of commercialization processes, and also recognizing the need to treat all internal activities as customers in the delivery of products/services to final consumers. An important element to ensure an adequate level of customer satisfaction is the need to properly manage the required services inside business processes, where the management of technology services becomes an imperative in almost every company. This paper presents the ITIL standard, which is a framework that allows the delivery of technology services to be efficiently managed, in order to improve internal business processes and obtain other benefits such as better internal communication. After that, the use of ITIL as a frame of reference for enhancing quality is proposed, focused not only on IT but on any type of service in general.[ES] El mundo moderno ha llevado a las empresas a ser cada vez más competitivas, volviendo al cliente el eje central de los procesos de comercialización, pero evidenciando la necesidad de tratar todas las actividades internas como clientes parciales en el proceso de entrega del producto o servicio a los consumidores finales. Un elemento necesario para asegurar un adecuado nivel de satisfacción a los clientes radica en la necesidad de gestionar adecuadamente los servicios requeridos en los procesos empresariales, donde la gestión de los servicios de tecnología se vuelve un imperativo en casi todas las empresas. Este artículo presenta el estándar ITIL, el cual es un marco de referencia que permite administrar de manera eficiente la prestación de servicios de tecnología, de cara a mejorar los procesos internos de las empresas y obtener otros beneficios, como potencializar la comunicación interna. Tras ello, se propone el uso de ITIL como marco de referencia para la mejora de la calidad, no solo centrado en las TI, sino de cualquier tipo de servicio en general.Gil Gómez, H.; Oltra Badenes, RF.; Adarme-Jaimes, W. (2014). Service quality management based on the application of the ITIL standard. DYNA. 81(186):51-56. doi:10.15446/dyna.v81n186.37953S51568118

A Qualitative Case Study Identifying Metrics for ITIL Request Fulfillment Process: Perspectives of an Information Technology Service Provider Group

Without metrics, the quality and effectiveness of the IT services cannot be measured or managed. This study examined the request fulfillment process of an IT service provider group, identified that group’s perceptions of the most important metrics of the process, and created dashboards to display those metrics. Results found 12 metrics perceived by the group as most important. Three dashboard pages were created using iDashboards. This study should be meaningful to a growing number of IT practitioners because it addressed metrics, measurements, and evaluation of IT processes on which very little previous empirical work has been conducted

Problemas en la adopción de modelos de gestión de servicios de tecnologías de información. Una revisión sistemática de la literatura

Ante el creciente uso de las tecnologías de información se han desarrollado modelos de gestión de servicios de tecnología de información (GSTI) con la finalidad que las organizaciones puedan ofrecer servicios de manera eficaz y con mayor nivel de calidad. Sin embargo, el cumplimiento de estos modelos no ha representado un trabajo fácil y las organizaciones han encontrado diversos problemas logrando adopciones parciales. El objetivo del estudio es analizar los problemas que las organizaciones han tenido en la adopción de un modelo de GSTI y para ello se ha realizado una revisión sistemática de la literatura. En la revisión se encontró que sólo algunos procesos fueron adoptados como parte de la implementación de los modelos y del análisis realizado podemos mencionar que las dificultades más recurrentes son: la falta de compromiso de la alta dirección y la falta de conocimiento sobre los modelos de GSTI y sus beneficios.Information technologies service management (ITSM) models have developed due to the increasing use of information technologies in order that organizations can deliver services efficiently and with a higher level of quality. However, models’ compliance has not been an easy job and the organizations have found problems achieving partial adoptions. The aim of this study is to analyze the problems that organizations had in the adoption of an ITSM model. To achieve this goal a systematic literature review was performed. The review confirmed that only some processes had adopted by the companies. The analysis shows us that more recurrent difficulties are lack of commitment from senior management and lack of knowledge about the ITSM model and its benefits