Co-created business models of connected health services

Abstract. Because of the advancement of technology, healthcare has been developed along with different sectors such as education, entertainment, and business. ‘Connected Health’ term comes for changing the patient-provider relationship by using technology which is also called ‘e-health’. As a developed country like Finland who is the pioneer of e-health has been participating a project called inDemand for the purpose of changing healthcare to provide co-created experience for patients. Their main objective to identify and solve the needs relates to health entities by enhancing the capacity of them and creating opportunity for private organization. This thesis is a part of this project. This study aims to find out the process for a co-created business model for connected health services. The study concentrates on two parts- business model and co-creation. It deals with different concepts of business model and co-creation, their way of doing along with components and the impact of them in healthcare. The study has a qualitative nature and it applies the case study method for conducting the research. In this method, empirical data is collected based on semi-structured thematic interviews by face-to-face and Skype. Participants were chosen from those organizations which are the stakeholders of inDemand project for getting overall idea about their way of doing the co-creation process. The findings of the thesis outline that there should be a combination of components from the business model and co-creation for conducting the process of co-creation of business model. The components are-customers, target customer segments, selling, marketing, and distribution channel activities, value proposition, value creation and extraction, value network and competition, products/services, pricing, cost structure and revenue model, processes, resources and practices, dialogue, access, risk benefits and transparency and shared purpose. In this research, the theoretical contribution confirms the results of the study. The results can help the case companies to properly blend the components and at the same time, to motivate all stakeholders along with customers or patients to participate in the co-creation process. Future research will continue to identify the process of co-creation over a large population to see the indifferences among every sample

Models of Maternal Healthcare for African refugee women in High-Income Countries: A Systematic Review.

OBJECTIVE: To explore models of maternal healthcare for African refugee women and their acceptability, cost and associated outcomes. DESIGN: A systematic review and content analysis SETTING: High-income countries PARTICIPANTS: African refugee women REVIEW METHODS: Seven databases were searched to identify peer-reviewed literature using defined keywords and inclusion criteria. Two authors independently screened the search findings and the full texts of eligible studies. The quality of the included studies was appraised, and the findings were analysed using a template. RESULTS: Nine studies met the criteria. Four studies were qualitative, two quantitative and three studies used mixed methods. Four models of care were identified: midwifery-led care, hospital-based integrated care, primary care physician-led integrated care and a holistic refugee-specific primary healthcare model (one-stop shop). Issues affecting care delivery were identified as communication barriers, low health literacy, high transport costs and low engagement of refugee women in their care. KEY CONCLUSIONS: The lack of evidence regarding the impact of care models on the maternal healthcare outcomes of African refugees highlights the need to improve care evaluations. These results reinforce the importance of education and interventions to build refugee women's health literacy and strength-based communication approaches supported by multidisciplinary, multilingual and highly trained teams of health professionals. There is also a need to involve African refugee women in shared decision making. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: The findings suggest the need for universal access to a woman-centred whole-of-system care approach for African refugees that emphasises culturally competent, safe, respectful and compassionate multi-professional care and greater economic security to cover costs

An Interprofessional Curriculum on Antimicrobial Stewardship Improves Knowledge and Attitudes Toward Appropriate Antimicrobial Use and Collaboration.

BackgroundInappropriate antimicrobial use can threaten patient safety and is the focus of collaborative physician and pharmacist antimicrobial stewardship teams. However, antimicrobial stewardship is not comprehensively taught in medical or pharmacy school curricula. Addressing this deficiency can teach an important concept as well as model interprofessional healthcare.MethodsWe created an antimicrobial stewardship curriculum consisting of an online learning module and workshop session that combined medical and pharmacy students, with faculty from both professions. Learners worked through interactive, branched-logic clinical cases relating to appropriate antimicrobial use. We surveyed participants before and after the curriculum using validated questions to assess knowledge and attitudes regarding antimicrobial stewardship and interprofessional collaboration. Results were analyzed using paired χ2 and t tests and mixed-effects logistic regression.ResultsAnalysis was performed with the 745 students (425 medical students, 320 pharmacy students) who completed both pre- and postcurriculum surveys over 3 years. After completing the curriculum, significantly more students perceived that they were able to describe the role of each profession in appropriate antimicrobial use (34% vs 82%, P < .001), communicate in a manner that engaged the interprofessional team (75% vs 94%, P < .001), and describe collaborative approaches to appropriate antimicrobial use (49% vs 92%, P < .001). Student favorability ratings were high for the online learning module (85%) and small group workshop (93%).ConclusionsA curriculum on antimicrobial stewardship consisting of independent learning and an interprofessional workshop significantly increased knowledge and attitudes towards collaborative antimicrobial stewardship among preclinical medical and pharmacy students

A novel bio-inspired routing algorithm based on ACO for WSNs

The methods to achieve efficient routing in energy constrained wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is a fundamental issue in networking research. A novel approach of ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm for discovering the optimum route for information transmission in the WSNs is proposed here for optimization and enhancement. The issue of path selection to reach the nodes and vital correspondence parameters, for example, the versatility of nodes, their constrained vitality, the node residual energy and route length are considered since the communications parameters and imperatives must be taken into account by the imperative systems that mediate in the correspondence procedure, and the focal points of the subterranean insect framework have been utilized furthermore. Utilizing the novel technique and considering both the node mobility and the existing energy of the nodes, an optimal route and best cost from the originating node to the target node can be detected. The proposed algorithm has been simulated and verified using MATLAB and the simulation results demonstrate that new ACO based algorithm achieved improved performance, about 30% improvement compared with the traditional ACO algorithm, and faster convergence to determine the best cost route, and recorded an improvement in the energy consumption of the nodes per transmission

Energy-efficient scalable routing protocol based on ACO for WSNS

Efficient routing is an essential requirement for the design of wireless sensor network (WSN) protocols to overcome inherent challenges and to meet hardware and resource constraints. An energy-efficient scalable routing algorithm based on ant colony optimization (ACO) for WSNs is presented here to find the optimal path of data transmission while consuming less energy leading to increase of network’s lifetime. Most of the existing ACO based routing algorithms are designed on the assumption that the sensor nodes and the sinks are stationary and do not consider the overhead of mobility and the current node energy is not considered, which will prompt sudden passing of certain nodes. To overcome the existing problem of accommodating node mobility, reducing initialization time for ant based routing algorithm and to maintain scalability in WSN for time critical applications, an ACO based WSN routing algorithm has been proposed and analyzed in this paper. The proposed algorithm has been simulated and verified utilizing MATLAB. The evaluation results demonstrate that it has reduced energy consumption, almost 50% less consumed energy even with the increasing number of nodes, compared with the traditional ACO and an existing ant-based routing algorithm. Moreover, it increases the nodes’ lifetime and lifetime of the network

A noble approach of ACO algorithm for WSN

In energy compelled wireless sensor networks (WSNs), the means by which to perform effectual routing is among the main focuses. A noble approach of ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm for discovering the optimum route in the WSNs for data transmission is proposed here for enhancement and optimization considering the issue of path selection to reach the nodes. Using the proposed ACO algorithm and considering both the node mobility and the existing energy of the nodes, an optimum route and best cost from the originating node to the target node can be detected. The proposed algorithm has been simulated and verified utilizing MATLAB and the simulation results demonstrate that new ant colony optimization based algorithm can achieve better performance and faster convergence to determine the best cost route

Mixed-Method Impact Evaluation of a Mobile Phone Application for Nutrition Monitoring in Indonesia

Child malnutrition (includes both under- and overweight) remains a challenge. Routine growth monitoring is a common practice that aims to: detect children at risk of malnutrition; direct essential resources when children have growth faltering; track nutrition trends; determine eligibility for counselling and other specific services; and help to make child malnutrition more visible to the child’s caregivers, the community and government. The quality and usefulness of growth monitoring is often limited by poor data quality, long delays between data collection and dissemination that prevent timely response, and shortcomings in the interpretation and use of the data. The full potential of growth monitoring is often underused both to increase knowledge and improve practices at community level and to inform decision-making for better nutrition. The use of mobile phone technology may offer innovative opportunities to strengthen community-based growth monitoring and make it more effective for tackling child malnutrition. Despite global enthusiasm for using mobile phones for nutrition monitoring and surveillance systems, there are only very few studies that have critically assessed their application. Together with World Vision Indonesia and World Vision Canada, the Institute of Development Studies aimed to fill this evidence gap and evaluate the piloting of a mobile phone application for community-based growth monitoring.UK Department for International Developmen