The Digitalization of medicine supply chain: How to re-aim the shots in the dark?

ABSTRACT Healthcare expenses have been on the rise for decades. One of the key areas contributing to this ever-expanding growth is medicine expenses. Medicines are required to maintain a sustainable health system in a world of aging populations and pandemics. Novel medicines combat diseases previously considered incurable, and medicines help people with chronic conditions to live normal lives. Furthermore, in emerging economies, pharmacies are often the first and only interface to healthcare services, whereby other medical services are scarce or expensive. However, medicines are associated with costs. To maintain a sustainable health system, the growing expenses have to be managed. There are different ways of controlling medicine expenses. In this age of digitalization, when multiple sectors have been disrupted by digital technologies, it can be argued that digital technologies have a role to play in the medicine supply field. This intersection of medicine supply and information systems has been, however, sparsely studied. This thesis seeks to fill this research gap by exploring the medicine supply chain and discovering obstacles and bottlenecks across the chain. The study also intends to identify how information systems and digital technologies can be utilized to remediate the problems and facilitate an efficient medicine supply chain. The research approaches the medicine supply chain arena through the medicine supply chain concept. The supply chain is a highly complex world involving the pharmaceutical industry and the distribution, prescription and dispensing of medicines. This research examines this arena through cases from across the supply chain covered in four separate studies and related articles. The supply chain concept and the scene are set in one of the studies, followed by studies on the digitalization of pharmacies, medicine waste management in hospitals and the digitalization of the plasma derivatives supply chain. The results of this research illustrate that the main role of digital technology in the management of the medicine supply chain relates to managing several information asymmetries across the chain. The key is to increase transparency between various stakeholders in the chain through novel digital solutions. Currently, the supply chain processes are largely based on rules of thumb rather than facts and evidence, and this should be addressed to maintain a sustainable chain and, subsequently, a sustainable health system. TIIVISTELMÄ Terveydenhuollon kulut ovat nousseet vuosikymmenien ajan. Lääkekulut muodostavat merkittävän osan terveysmenoista. Lääkkeitä tarvitaan kestävän terveydenhuoltojärjestelmän ylläpitämiseksi: lääkkeillä voidaan hoitaa aiemmin parantumattomia sairauksia sekä tukea ikääntyvää väestöä. Kehittyvissä talouksissa apteekit ovat usein myös ensimmäinen ja ainoa yhteys terveyspalveluihin. Lääkkeillä ja niiden kehittämisellä on kuitenkin kulunsa ja kestävän terveydenhuollon järjestelmän ylläpitämiseksi onkin kyettävä ymmärtämään ja hallitsemaan lääkekuluja. Lääkekuluja voidaan hallita eri tavoin. Digitalisaatiolla voidaan ajatella olevan tässä myös roolinsa – useat toimialathan ovat muuttuneet merkittävästi digitaalisten ratkaisujen myötä. Digitalisaation ja tietojärjestelmien merkitystä lääkejakelussa ei olla kuitenkaan tutkittu laajasti. Tämän väitöskirjan tarkoituksena on täyttää tätä tutkimusaukkoa perehtyen lääkejakelun prosesseihin, niihin liittyviin esteisiin ja pullonkauloihin sekä digitaalisiin ratkaisuihin, joilla lääkejakelua voidaan tukea ja tehostaa. Tutkimus lähestyy aluetta mallintaen lääkejakeluketjua. Lääkejakeluketju on monimutkainen globaali systeemi, joka kattaa toimijoita mm. lääketeollisuudesta, jakelusta ja logistiikasta, terveydenhuollosta ja vähittäismyynnistä. Tässä tutkimuksessa jakeluketjua tarkastellaan neljän tutkimuksen kautta, jotka liittyvät lääkejakeluketjun eri osiin. Aluksi esitellään lääkejakeluketjukonsepti, jota seuraavat tutkimukset apteekkien digitalisoinnista, sairaalan lääkehuollosta ja veriplasmatuotteiden toimitusketjun digitalisoinnista. Tämän tutkimuksen tulokset havainnollistavat, että digitaalisten ratkaisujen päärooli lääkejakeluketjun hallinnassa liittyy varsinkin informaatiosymmetrioiden hallintaan sekä tiedon avoimuuden ja läpinäkyvyyden lisäämiseen ketjun eri sidosryhmien välillä. Nykyisin lääkejakeluketjun prosesseja leimaa epävarmuus ja faktoihin perustuva päätöksenteko on vaikeaa, mikä heikentää tehokkaan lääkejakelun ylläpitämistä

The promotion of assets in the community

Espoon keskuksessa toteutetun osallistava budjetointi Mun Idea -hankkeen osatuoto

The lure of law in development

Since the Cold War ended, the world’s principal financial and development institutions have focused extensive attention on ‘rule of law assistance’ or ‘promotion’ in poor and developing countries. This body of work generally treats law in some isolation from broader social and political questions, presented as a technical exercise, recalibrating law in pursuit of undisputed universal goals, such as eradicating poverty or fulfilling human rights. In this article, I undertake a close reading of the literature of two major rule of law funders in the field of market-building — as distinct from, albeit related to, the state-building work also undertaken under this rubric at the UN and elsewhere. My aim is to show how this body of work promotes a thoroughgoing vision of a particular social and political order. Noting that the techniques of rule-of-law promotion align poorly with fundamental principles generally attributed to the rule of law, and that there is little or no evidence that this vision does — or even can — achieve its stated aims, I redescribe rule of law promotion as a kind of rhetorical intervention, a morality play concerned with the universalisation and naturalisation of certain ideas about society, polity and economy. In this essentially pedagogical role, rule of law promotion can claim some modest success

Process of change in organisations through eHealth: 2nd International eHealth Symposium 2010, Stuttgart, Germany, June 7 - 8, 2010 ; Proceedings edited by Stefan Kirn

Foreword: On behalf of the Organizing Committee, it is my pleasure to welcome you to Hohenheim, Stuttgart for the 2nd International eHealth Symposium which is themed 'Process of change in organisations through eHealth'. Starting with the inaugural event in 2009, which took place in Turku, Finland, we want to implement a tradition of international eHealth symposia. The presentations and associated papers in this proceedings give a current and representative outline of technical options, application potentials, usability, acceptance and potential for optimization in health care by ICT. We are pleased to present a high-quality program. This year we convey a unique opportunity for academic researchers and industry practitioners to report their state-of-the-art research findings in the domain of eHealth. The symposium aims to foster the international community by gathering experts from various countries such as Australia, Great Britain, Finland and Germany. A first step is done by this symposium which considers this interaction and delivers an insight into current advances made and open research questions. The organizers would like to take the opportunity to thank all the people which made the Symposium possible. We are pleased if both attendance to the 2nd International eHealth Symposium 2010 and reading of this proceedings give you answers to urging questions, a basis for critical discussions, references on interesting tasks and stimulations for new approaches. Table of Contents: Martin Sedlmayr, Andreas Becker, Hans-Ulrich Prokosch, Christian Flügel, Fritz Meier: OPAL Health - A Smart Object Network for Hospital Logistics // Rajeev K. Bali, M. Chris Gribbons, Vikraman Baskaran, Raouf NG Naguib: Perspectives on E-Health: the human touch // Falk Zwicker, Torsten Eymann: Why RFID projects in hospitals (necessarily) fail. Lesson from comparative studies // Nilmin Wickramasinghe, F. Moghimi, J. Schaffer: Designing an intelligent risk detection framework using knowledge discovery techniques to improve efficiency and accuracy of healthcare care decision making // Volker Viktor, Heiko Schellhorn: In search of an appropriate service model for telehealth in Germany // Simone Schillings, Julia Fernandes: Towards a reference model for telemedicine // Reima Suomi: Towards rewards awareness in health care information systems // Manuel Zwicker, Jürgen Seitz, Nilmini Wickramasingh: Adaptions for e-kiosk systems to develop barrier-free terminals for handicapped persons --

The First 25 Years of the Bled eConference: Themes and Impacts

The Bled eConference is the longest-running themed conference associated with the Information Systems discipline. The focus throughout its first quarter-century has been the application of electronic tools, migrating progressively from Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) via Inter-Organisational Systems (IOS) and eCommerce to encompass all aspects of the use of networking facilities in industry and government, and more recently by individuals, groups and society as a whole. This paper reports on an examination of the conference titles and of the titles and abstracts of the 773 refereed papers published in the Proceedings since 1995. This identified a long and strong focus on categories of electronic business and corporate perspectives, which has broadened in recent years to encompass the democratic, the social and the personal. The conference\u27s extend well beyond the papers and their thousands of citations and tens of thousands of downloads. Other impacts have included innovative forms of support for the development of large numbers of graduate students, and the many international research collaborations that have been conceived and developed in a beautiful lake-side setting in Slovenia

Towards Peer-production in Public Services: cases from Finland

Drawing from a case-study on Helsinki Home Care, the authors identify institutional impacts of new service development in the context of public service delivery, posed by the increasingly collaborative nature of service development and delivery. The authors illustrate the change through identification of characteristics embedded in the traditional professional logic, and the new service logic. With this, the paper contributes to the theoretical discussion on service innovation and collaborative service creation, showing that solely the technical, organizational or commercial perspectives are insufficient in understanding the service development process. This paper further widens the discussion about public service innovation using the institutional change framework. There are many challenges and opportunities in designing, developing and maintaining services for participatory modes of governance, not to mention their co-creation and peer-to-peer aspects. We ask what can be learned from the current research, and what is happening already beyond academia? With the aim to increase the opportunities for dialogue between the Finnish scene and the international context, we have gathered this collection of articles that deal broadly with the relationships between peer-to-peer dynamics, and public services. Most of the cases presented are illustrative of recent developments and discussions in Finnish society, however, also included are broader international perspectives, giving historical reflection and future-oriented speculation on how peer production might affect the structures of our society

A Living Lab Facility on Safety in Homes among the Elderly and Elderly Disabled: A Literature Review

The study aimed to improve safety in the home environment for the elderly to live independently. The focus was discussing the measures of safe environment that promoted health, safety and security of the elderly. The study described the constituents of a safe home environment and approaches that safe environment promoted health of the aging. The objective was to utilize the results to advance safety in homes and assist the development of a living laboratory in the Ostrobothnia region. There is evident urgency for preventive health care measures that reduce injuries. The major hindrance in reducing falls was the inadequacy of facilities in homes for safety. Housing designs were inconsiderate of the elderly population. As a result, majority of this population were enrolled into rehabilitation institutions prematurely. A literature review with content analysis was established. The databases included Ebrary, CINAHL, Ovid, SAGE Premier and Science Direct as well as reliable electronic publications. These included WHO and Statistics Finland. The elderly safety was improved through modification of simple measures (grab bars, adequate light and non-slippery floor) and introduction of emerging advanced technology. Emerging care technologies were designed to enhance and maintain the well-being and independence of the aged. Technologists were to acknowledge pre-existing practices by enhancing them rather than replacing them. The recommendations include data on statistics that evaluated the safeness of the technologies and their direct correlation to the nursing profession