Supporting the critical role of family carers in wellness management

Aging populations, the increased prevalence of chronic disease, and spiraling healthcare costs have led to calls for policy and technology that focuses on wellness management, preventative interventions, and decentralized healthcare. This has prompted several initiatives aimed at empowering individuals to proactively manage their wellness, including employee wellness programmes, step-tracking mobile apps, etc. However, a critical actor in this proposed new healthcare model is the family carer. These individuals are charged with managing outpatients’ wellness, tracking deteriorations, providing support, and even administering routine care in order to minimize and/or delay the need for further clinical intervention. Yet for most people, ‘wellness’ is a poorly understood and ambiguously measured concept. Hence, family carers are often asked to rely upon personal discretion to perform their duties. This paper uses a qualitative case study based on a series of semi-structured interviews to explore how family carers manage this responsibility, the support available to them (technologically and socially), and the challenges they face. It is informed by a research model which combines activity theory and attribute substitution theory in order to make sense of how the diverse actors involved in wellness management (e.g. the family carers, the patients, other family members, clinical/non-clinical healthcare workers) communicate and coordinate. Findings suggest family carers’ role in managing outpatient wellness is hindered by their inability to gather/share key wellness-related information with others involved. The study concludes by calling for better technological infrastructure linking carers with clinical professionals and more standardized information channels between various stakeholders in the caring activity

Reviewing mHealth in developing countries: a stakeholder perspective

Infrastructural deficiencies, limited access to medicare, and shortage of health care workers are just a few of the barriers to health care in developing countries. As a consequence, the burden of disease and its impact on the livelihoods and the economic productivity of people are staggering. mHealth has been extolled as one possible solution to overcoming these challenges, yet discussion of mHealth systems is often limited to specific tasks and user groups. To address this, we adopt a stakeholder perspective and analyze existing research on the mHealth process in developing countries. Specifically, we focus on three key stakeholder groups, i.e. healthcare workers, patients, and system developers. We perform an in-depth analysis of 60 peer-reviewed studies to determine the extent to which different mHealth stakeholder interactions are researched, and to identify high-level themes emerging within these interactions. This analysis illustrates two key gaps in existing mHealth research. First, while interactions involving healthcare workers and/or patients have received significant attention, relatively little research has looked at the role of patient-to-patient interactions. Second, the interactions between system developers and the other stakeholder groups are strikingly under-represented. We conclude by calling for more mHealth research that explicitly addresses these stakeholder interactions

Information sharing and user behavior in Internet-enabled Peer-to-Peer Lending Systems: an empirical study

Internet-based information systems (IS) have enabled various forms of collective intelligence, action, and resources (e.g. open source software, innovation marketplaces, crowdsourcing, and crowdfunding). Within the domain of crowdfunding, Internet-enabled Peer-to-Peer Lending Systems (IP2PLS) have emerged as a disruptive technology, with implications for the financial services sector, business capitalization strategies, and personal and community development. IS research investigating user behavior in IP2PLS has revealed the saliency of social identity and personal transparency (as expressed through information sharing) in such systems. Prior research has largely focused on a small number of IP2PLS providers, thus this study examines a very large but under-researched platform. The study tests a theoretical model based on Social Identity Theory and prior IP2PLS studies, through an analysis of 116,667 loan records, and a subsequent analysis of 1000 manually coded records, to investigate the impact of information sharing on user (lenders and borrowers) behavior. The study reveals the importance of social (vs financial) data, and further reveals relationships that frequently contradict prior findings from other IP2PLS. The study thus implies the need for a more heterogeneous view of the IP2PLS domain, and the need to more fully understand as systems that support user behavior by enabling social information exchanges

Where is the crowd?

Crowdfunding has received increasing attention in the financial services space in the past few years. This is because crowdfunding has become a viable alternative to traditional capital investment and thus a threat to investors in that sector. Various platforms exist which allow fundraisers to pitch an idea and spread awareness with the intention of acquiring backers. Most backers of crowdfunding campaigns come to the platform with the fundraiser rather than from the platform itself [25]. Fundraisers must find and engage a crowd and not rely on the platform for provision of the crowd. This paper sets out four action design principles for identifying and engaging a crowd. Using a boundary object theory approach, the crowdfunding campaign is broken down based on backer’s social worlds which define the crowd and their interests

Health and social care: towards an understanding of wellness management and the role of IS

Publicly provided healthcare systems are coming under increasing pressure worldwide because of aging populations, increased prevalence of chronic disease and spiralling healthcare costs. This pressure can be alleviated by focusing on community-based healthcare and empowering people to proactively manage their own general wellness. To this end, many employee wellness programmes have been launched, as have many technologies to measure specific aspects of wellness. However, wellness is a poorly understood concept and effective wellness-management is elusive and lacking in metrics. In light of this deficit, this research-in-progress draws on activity theory and attribute substitution theory to propose a preliminary model describing how wellness is managed by various actors (e.g. the individual, family carers, healthcare professionals) in the collaborative wellness management activity. The study's empirical data gathering reveals that wellness management is often inhibited because of an inability of these actors to access and reflect on the contextual factors that mediate the activity of managing wellness (i.e. the rules that guide them, the division of roles and responsibilities, and the tools that are utilised in managing wellness)

Creators and Backers in Rewards-Based Crowdfunding: Will Incentive Misalignment Affect Kickstarter’s Sustainability?

Incentive misalignment in rewards-based crowd-funding occurs because creators may benefit disproportionately from fundraising, while backers may benefit disproportionately from the quality of project deliverables. The resulting principal-agent relationship means backers rely on campaign information to identify signs of moral hazard, adverse selection, and risk attitude asymmetry. We analyze campaign information related to fundraising, and compare how different information affects eventual backer satisfaction, based on an extensive dataset from Kickstarter. The data analysis uses a multi-model comparison to reveal similarities and contrasts in the estimated drivers of dependent variables that capture different outcomes in Kickstarter’s funding campaigns, using a linear probability model (LPM), which is a special case of the binary probability model. Our results reveal inconsistencies in funding information compared to backers’ satisfaction, and a plat-form-wide trend of decreasing satisfaction. The findings broadly suggest fundraising is influenced by information disclosure and backer feedback, while eventual backer satisfaction is closely potentially caused by in-formation about deferred compensation and long-term relationship-building