Electronic adverse incident reporting in hospitals

The purpose of this study was to assess attitudes toward and use of an electronic adverse incident reporting system in all four hospitals in one NHS Scotland Health Board area. A questionnaire was used to assess Medical Consultants', Managers', and Nurses' attitudes and perceptions about electronic adverse incident reporting. Actual adverse incident reporting data were also analysed. The main findings from this study are that Consultants, Managers, and Nurses all had positive attitudes about responsibility for reporting adverse incidents. All respondents indicated that the design of and information collected by the electronic adverse incident reporting system (DATIX) was adequate but Consultants had more negative attitudes and perceptions than Managers and Nurses about DATIX. All respondents expressed negative attitudes about the amount and type of feedback they receive from reporting, and Consultants expressed more negative attitudes about how DATIX is managed than Managers and Nurses. Analysis of adverse incident reporting data found that the proportion of Consultants using DATIX to report incidents was significantly lower than that of Managers and Nurses. The findings suggest that there are no additional barriers to incident reporting associated with the use of a bespoke electronic adverse incident reporting system as compared to other types of systems. Although an electronic adverse incident reporting system may be able to increase incident reporting and facilitate organisational learning by making it easier to report incidents and analyse incident reporting data, strong leadership within hospitals / healthcare professions (or healthcare subcultures) is still required in order to promote and sustain incident reporting to improve patient safety

Electronic Library Collections and Users with Visual Impairments: Challenges, Developments, and the State of Collections Policies in Academic and Public Libraries

Academic and public library collections are developed based on the needs of the communities that surround them. Technology has increased the way users access information, and the way libraries offer information to their users. However, the accessibility of electronic resources for users with print disabilities remains an issue that has yet to have an equitable remedy. This paper identifies the challenges of visually impaired users, the developments in law, the current state of accessibility in academic and public library collections policies, and the current formats and products that are leading the way

Development of STEP-NC based machining system for machining process information flow

To realize the STEP-NC based machining system, it is necessary to perform machining feature extraction, generating machine-specific information, and creating a relationship between STEP-NC entities. A process planning system of a STEP-NC information flow that starts with constructing a machining feature from a CAD model will be developed. In this paper, a further in depth study of the implementation and adaptation of STEP-NC in manufacturing is studied. This study will help to understand how the data from CAD/CAM can be converted into STEP-NC codes and the machining process will be based on the STEP-NC codes generated

Some Reflections on Copyright Management Systems and Laws Designed to Protect Them

Copyright management systems (CMS)—technologies that enable copyright owners to regulate reliably and charge automatically for access to digital works—are the wave of the very near future. The advent of digital networks, which make copying and distribution of digital content quick, easy, and undetectable, has provided the impetus for CMS research and development. CMS are premised on the concept of trusted systems or secure digital envelopes that protect copyrighted content and allow access and subsequent copying only to the extent authorized by the copyright owner. Software developers are testing prototype systems designed to detect, prevent, count, and levy precise charges for uses that range from downloading to excerpting to simply viewing or listening to digital works. In a few years, for example, an individual seeking online access to a collection of short fiction might be greeted with a menu of options including: Open and view short story A — $0.50, or$0.40 for students doing assigned reading (verified based on roster submitted by instructor) Open and view short story B (by a more popular author) — $0.80, or$0.70 for students Download short story A (encrypted and copy-protected) — $1.35 Download short story B —$2.25 Download entire collection — $15.00 Extract excerpt from short story A —$0.03 per 50 words Extract excerpt from short story B — $0.06 per 50 words CMS also loom large on the legislative horizon. Copyright owners have argued that technological protection alone will not deter unauthorized copying unless the law provides penalties for circumventing the technology. Although a bill to protect CMS against tampering failed to reach a vote in Congress last year, the World Intellectual Property Organization\u27s recent adoption of treaty provisions requiring protection means that Congress must revisit the question soon. Part II describes these developments. The seemingly inexorable trend toward a digital CMS regime raises two questions, which the author addresses in parts III and IV, respectively. First, broadly drawn protection for CMS has the potential to proscribe technologies that have indisputably lawful uses and also to foreclose, as a practical matter, uses of copyrighted works that copyright law expressly permits. How may protection for CMS be drafted to avoid disrupting the current copyright balance? Second, and equally fundamental, CMS may enable both pervasive monitoring of individual reading activity and comprehensive private legislation designed to augment—and possibly alter beyond recognition—the default rules that define and delimit copyright owners\u27 rights. Given the unprecedented capabilities of these technologies, is it also desirable to set limits on their reach

Computerization of workflows, guidelines and care pathways: a review of implementation challenges for process-oriented health information systems

There is a need to integrate the various theoretical frameworks and formalisms for modeling clinical guidelines, workflows, and pathways, in order to move beyond providing support for individual clinical decisions and toward the provision of process-oriented, patient-centered, health information systems (HIS). In this review, we analyze the challenges in developing process-oriented HIS that formally model guidelines, workflows, and care pathways. A qualitative meta-synthesis was performed on studies published in English between 1995 and 2010 that addressed the modeling process and reported the exposition of a new methodology, model, system implementation, or system architecture. Thematic analysis, principal component analysis (PCA) and data visualisation techniques were used to identify and cluster the underlying implementation ‘challenge’ themes. One hundred and eight relevant studies were selected for review. Twenty-five underlying ‘challenge’ themes were identified. These were clustered into 10 distinct groups, from which a conceptual model of the implementation process was developed. We found that the development of systems supporting individual clinical decisions is evolving toward the implementation of adaptable care pathways on the semantic web, incorporating formal, clinical, and organizational ontologies, and the use of workflow management systems. These architectures now need to be implemented and evaluated on a wider scale within clinical settings

The Impact of Trust on Acceptance of Online Banking

Major benefits of Online Banking include for banks cost savings, and for customers convenience. Nevertheless, many people perceive Internet banking as risky. This paper introduces a tentative conceptual framework. Trust will be integrated into the Technology Acceptance Model – TAM - (Davis, 1989). Recent research showed that Trust has a striking influence on user willingness to engage in online exchanges of money and personal sensitive information. Detailed literature about Online Banking and Trust is provided. TAM is discussed in depth; external variables that are suitable for the Online Banking context is suggested. In addition the theoretical justification for the conceptual framework integration is discussed. Finally managerial implications and recommendations for Online Banking acceptance are suggested

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Learners’ continuance participation intention of collaborative group project in virtual learning environment: an extended TAM perspective

The aim of this study is to explore learners’ intention to return to the electronic environment through the use of wikipages. The survey is based on students’ participation in a collaborative group project over a one semester course on business information systems. A research model based on the extended Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) has been proposed to investigate what factors will influence learners’ continuance participation in the electronic learning environment. 75% of students returned the questionnaire and the data analysis results based on the extended TAM Shows that the learners’ intention to return to the electronic learning environment was highly associated with their attitude towards the electronic learning tool and the affection associated with the tool

Electronic doctoral theses in the UK: a sector-wide survey into policies, practice and barriers to Open Access

Sharing knowledge and research outputs is critical to the progress of science and human development, and a central tenet of academia. The Internet itself is a product of the academic community, and opening access to that community’s most important body of research, doctoral theses, is both a logical and an inevitable development. Progress toward open access to electronic theses has been slow in the UK. Much has been written on the perceived barriers and practical/infrastructural considerations that might explain this, but a comprehensive picture of that progress, and obstacles to it, was lacking. In 2010, a survey of policy and practice in UK HEIs was conducted by UCL (University College London) Library Services (commissioned by the Joint Information Systems Committee, JISC) to address this very issue. Incorporating inputs from 144 institutions currently awarding doctoral degrees, the work provides the first clear and detailed picture of the status of open access to doctoral research in the UK. The mission of the UK Council for Graduate Education (UKCGE) is to promote and support the interests of graduate education, and this it does through dissemination of best practice and intelligence on emergent trends; helping to shape policy and practice for the benefit of the UK HEI sector. This report contributes to that mission by bringing to the membership’s attention the results of this important work by UCL Library Services; a collaboration between UKCGE and the authors of the original work, it sets out the policies and practices that emerged from the survey and also considers what has been learned about the perceived barriers to the implementation of open access to electronic theses. The 2010 survey has enabled, for the first time, a differentiation to be made between barriers that are “real” and those which are unfounded and/or yet to be properly validated. At the same time, the work highlights the progress made in certain critical areas, as well as those that require our greater attention. A positive picture emerges for the UK on the adoption of the electronic thesis, with the majority of HEIs surveyed expected to be providing open access to their theses in five years’ time. A more detailed picture also emerges regarding the primary reasons for requests to restrict access to theses, some of which, notably, apply only to electronic (not print) theses. This has necessarily given rise to new policy developments. There is positive evidence also of collaboration among HEIs to provide an efficient and robust service for accessing electronic theses; pooling their resources and expertise either in the development of their institutional repositories or in operating a joint service. The key driver of open access to electronic theses is the opportunity for UK HEIs to “showcase” their research outputs to the widest possible audience and enhance their impact. There are no reliable means as yet to measure this impact, but there are encouraging early indications that electronic doctoral theses attract significant attention when made openly accessible. Open access to electronic theses may therefore indeed accelerate the sharing of knowledge and the progress of scientific discovery and human development

Regulating Data as Property: A New Construct for Moving Forward

The global community urgently needs precise, clear rules that define ownership of data and express the attendant rights to license, transfer, use, modify, and destroy digital information assets. In response, this article proposes a new approach for regulating data as an entirely new class of property. Recently, European and Asian public officials and industries have called for data ownership principles to be developed, above and beyond current privacy and data protection laws. In addition, official policy guidances and legal proposals have been published that offer to accelerate realization of a property rights structure for digital information. But how can ownership of digital information be achieved? How can those rights be transferred and enforced? Those calls for data ownership emphasize the impact of ownership on the automotive industry and the vast quantities of operational data which smart automobiles and self-driving vehicles will produce. We looked at how, if at all, the issue was being considered in consumer-facing statements addressing the data being collected by their vehicles. To formulate our proposal, we also considered continued advances in scientific research, quantum mechanics, and quantum computing which confirm that information in any digital or electronic medium is, and always has been, physical, tangible matter. Yet, to date, data regulation has sought to adapt legal constructs for “intangible” intellectual property or to express a series of permissions and constraints tied to specific classifications of data (such as personally identifiable information). We examined legal reforms that were recently approved by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law to enable transactions involving electronic transferable records, as well as prior reforms adopted in the United States Uniform Commercial Code and Federal law to enable similar transactions involving digital records that were, historically, physical assets (such as promissory notes or chattel paper). Finally, we surveyed prior academic scholarship in the U.S. and Europe to determine if the physical attributes of digital data had been previously considered in the vigorous debates on how to regulate personal information or the extent, if at all, that the solutions developed for transferable records had been considered for larger classes of digital assets. Based on the preceding, we propose that regulation of digital information assets, and clear concepts of ownership, can be built on existing legal constructs that have enabled electronic commercial practices. We propose a property rules construct that clearly defines a right to own digital information arises upon creation (whether by keystroke or machine), and suggest when and how that right attaches to specific data though the exercise of technological controls. This construct will enable faster, better adaptations of new rules for the ever-evolving portfolio of data assets being created around the world. This approach will also create more predictable, scalable, and extensible mechanisms for regulating data and is consistent with, and may improve the exercise and enforcement of, rights regarding personal information. We conclude by highlighting existing technologies and their potential to support this construct and begin an inventory of the steps necessary to further proceed with this process