Healthcare processes and IT: Exploring Productivity Gains through Improved Allocative Efficiency

The benefits of health information technology (HIT) are widely accepted. Nonetheless, how HIT becomes embedded and transforms health-care processes remain an understudied area in the literature. In this study we extend prior research by undertaking a more granular examination of HIT systems’ impact on how non-IT resources are allocated to healthcare tasks and routines. The context of our research is a natural field study whereby an acute-care hospital implemented telemedicine as a tool to consult its geriatric patients. We collected and analyzed resource and patient consultation level data, both pre and post technology use to quantify possible shifts in resource allocations as well as cost efficiencies over time. Our findings suggest that HIT affords changes to non-IT resource allocations in clinical work processes which lead to changes in cost efficiencies. Depending on the nature of these non-IT resource re-allocations, cost efficiencies may not always be improved

An Industry-Level Analysis of the Potential and Realized Value of IT

IT investments are typically evaluated by weighing the potential benefits and actual costs of the investments. Potential benefits of IT investment, however, do not always translate directly to actual payoffs due to a variety of impediments in the value creation process. There often is a gap between the potential and realized value of IT investments which needs to be defined and measured. We explore the methodological tools available to measure potential and realized value of IT investments and address the gap between them by developing a measurement model grounded in production economics. We adopt the Malmquist productivity index to model the potential and realized value of IT and apply data envelopment analysis (DEA) techniques to solve the model. Using this model, we examine IT investments in industries in the United States during the 1992 to 1997 period. We also examine the impact of within-industry competition. The methodology that we use to address the research questions has two stages. First, we develop a measurement model for computing potential and realized value, and then we apply it to examine and explain the impact of competition. There are five main findings. (1) Less than half of the industries that we examined realized more than 70% of their potential value. Over time though, the industries improved their capacity to realize potential value. (2) Firms in industries that face high levels of competition invest in IT assets with higher potential value. (3) Industries experiencing low levels of competition in their industries invest in IT assets with lower potential value. (4) Despite having IT investments with higher potential value, highly competitive industries are less likely to realize potential value compared to industries in less competitive environments. (5) Finally, industry competitiveness does not impact overall IT efficiency gains over time due to countervailing effects

Total Factor Productivity Analysis Of The Water Services Industry In Malaysia

The interest in evaluating the total factor productivity of the water services industry has increased following the regulatory reform of the industry. In Malaysia, a visionary effort has been taken by the federal government on restructuring the water services industry to ensure its financial viability of water operators and to address the non-revenue water (NRW). Multitudes of initiatives as well as regulations have been introduced and implemented for the improvement of the water services industry productivity. However, there is lacking of studies conducted to assess the impact of the regulatory reform to the water services industry productivity. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to evaluate the total factor productivity (TFP) change in the water services industry in Malaysia before and after the regulatory reform. The study applies the bootstrap Malmquist Luenberger productivity index and integrates the undesirable output of NRW for the Malaysian water services industry. This study also aims to determine the drivers contributing to the TFP change in the 14 water operators before and after the regulatory reform. Moreover, this study is first attempt to capture five explanatory variables (regulatory reforms, customer density, domestic water consumption, production cost, and reserve margin) as determinants to explain the variation of productivity change in the industry. The results confirmed that during the study period, the industry experienced a deterioration in the average productivity of 0.57%, which is mainly attributed to the technical regression that occurred at an annual rate of 1.05%

A Social Science Approach Using Big Data for City Planning

Cities bring about economic dynamism through positive economic externalities; however, the concentration of people in dense locations has its costs — epidemics, social unrest, pollution, and congestion are some of the ills of cities. As cities evolve, they experience stress, and fault lines appear; the ability to pulse a city and provide early warning of these fault lines can prove advantageous for policymakers in managing and planning for cities. This paper outlines a research program that developed a city scanning tool to measure cities and detect aberrations as they surface. We aggregated data from various industry partners, governmental agencies, and public online sources to develop the measurement metric and applied social science theories to analyze and interpret the results. The results of this study contribute to information system (IS) research by showcasing the role IS research in city planning and for societal good

Impact of Online Influencer Endorsement on Product Sales: Quantifying Value of Online Influencer

In recent years, firms are making significant investments in online influencer endorsement. The effectiveness of online influencer endorsement and ways to develop effective endorsement strategies however are not clear. In this study, we conduct an exploratory study and empirically test the impact of online influencer endorsement on product sales. Using endorsement information from microblog site, Sina Weibo and sales data from online e-commerce platforms, Taobao and Tmall, we found positive impacts of online influencer endorsements on sales and the effect of online endorsement is stronger for influencers with more followers. We also found evidence that frequently endorsing products is counterproductive to the online influencer’s endorsement effort. The results of this study contribute to celebrity endorsement literature and practice

WRAPS: a programming and simulation software tool for integrated robotic welding

The outcome of this research is a low-cost off-line programming and simulation system called WRAPS for robotic arc-welding. WRAPS is an acronym for Welding Robot Adaptive Programming and Simulation. The package was developed on a Future FX20 microcomputer with 640 kbytes RAM under the Concurrent CP/M-86 operating system. It is written in the 'C' language and graphics capabilities is provided via the Graphics System eXtension (GSX) of Digital Research. WRAPS is menu-driven and utilises windows and icons through custom software for user interface. [Continues.

Impact of Online Reviews on Consumer Post-purchase Attitude Change and Transaction Failure

Online consumer review has become an important information source facilitating consumer decision-makings. Nevertheless, at times purchasing and consumption are segregated as two stages of a transaction. Extant literature revealed the impact of online reviews on purchase decisions, however, little is known about the effect of online reviews on consumer post-purchase attitude change. In this study, we conducted an empirical analysis of a hotel’s reservation data to find out how numerical rating and textual comments from online reviews after the purchasing episode but prior to the consumption episode will lead to consumers’ regret. We found that number of negative post-purchase review was positively related to cancellation possibility and this relationship was strengthened by high pre-purchase rating. In addition, number of hedonic/utilitarian comment and post-purchase rating jointly impacted cancellation behavior. This study contributes to consumer online review literature

Work Harder or Work Smarter? Information Technology and Resource Allocation in Healthcare Processes

While the impacts of health information technology (HIT) are widely studied, prior research presents mixed findings. In this study, a granular examination of the impact of HIT systems on how resources are allocated to healthcare tasks and processes was undertaken. A longitudinal field study that combined interview, archival, observation, and survey data was conducted. The effects of telemedicine on the input allocative efficiency of the healthcare process through the reallocation of organizational resources was evaluated and an assessment of whether gains in allocative efficiency resulted in improvements in organizational outcomes, such as lower hospitalization rates and lower uncertainty in patient wait time, was conducted. Applying the theory of swift and even flow, our findings suggest that the gains in allocative efficiency for some processes are associated with improved organizational outcomes

The framing effects of multipart pricing on consumer purchasing behavior of customized information good bundles

Applying behavioral economic theories, we hypothesize that consumers have sticky reference prices for individual information goods, but their perceived value for customizable bundle offers can be significantly influenced by the framing of a multipart pricing scheme. The potential impacts of these framing effects are measurable changes in consumer behavior and sales outcomes. We conducted a series of behavioral experiments and a large-scale natural field experiment involving actual purchases of customized information good bundles to confirm and analyze the hypothesized effects. The results demonstrate a consumer's willingness to purchase a customized bundle of information goods, the size of the resulting bundling, and the consumer's perceptions of the transaction are each significantly influenced by the design of the multipart pricing scheme. These results hold even when the final price and size of a customized bundle are the same across differing schemes. We discuss the potential tradeoffs in economic outcomes that result from price framing (e.g., likelihood of sale versus size of purchased bundles) and the implications for information good retailers