A Conceptual Model for Group Support Systems in Local Councils

This paper proposes a conceptual model of a context-aware group support system (GSS) to assist local council employees to perform collaborative tasks in conjunction with inter- and intra-organisational stakeholders. Most discussions about e-government focus on the use of ICT to improve the relationship between government and citizen, not on the relationship between government and employees. This paper seeks to expose the unique culture of UK local councils and to show how a GSS could support local government employer and employee needs

Case-based analysis in user requirements modelling for knowledge construction

Context: Learning can be regarded as knowledge construction in which prior knowledge and experience serve as basis for the learners to expand their knowledge base. Such a process of knowledge construction has to take place continuously in order to enhance the learners’ competence in a competitive working environment. As the information consumers, the individual users demand personalised information provision which meets their own specific purposes, goals, and expectations. Objectives: The current methods in requirements engineering are capable of modelling the common user’s behaviour in the domain of knowledge construction. The users’ requirements can be represented as a case in the defined structure which can be reasoned to enable the requirements analysis. Such analysis needs to be enhanced so that personalised information provision can be tackled and modelled. However, there is a lack of suitable modelling methods to achieve this end. This paper presents a new ontological method for capturing individual user’s requirements and transforming the requirements onto personalised information provision specifications. Hence the right information can be provided to the right user for the right purpose. Method: An experiment was conducted based on the qualitative method. A medium size of group of users participated to validate the method and its techniques, i.e. articulates, maps, configures, and learning content. The results were used as the feedback for the improvement. Result: The research work has produced an ontology model with a set of techniques which support the functions for profiling user’s requirements, reasoning requirements patterns, generating workflow from norms, and formulating information provision specifications. Conclusion: The current requirements engineering approaches provide the methodical capability for developing solutions. Our research outcome, i.e. the ontology model with the techniques, can further enhance the RE approaches for modelling the individual user’s needs and discovering the user’s requirements

MITAIS for Articulation Information Requirements in Strategic Decision Support

Strategic decision-making is seen as an important area of research where the theory, methods and technologies can bring in a great deal of benefit to the whole enterprise at the executive level. The study of information requirements for decision-making reveals that the level of detail, granularity, format of presentation, and broad range of information type are unique for the applications at the strategic level. The provision of relevant information involves articulation of requirements based on the decision problems described by the executive manager. This paper presents the MITAIS approach that allows the user to describe a decision problem interactively and assists articulation of the problem into a presentation in a decision space, by prompting possible patterns of decision dimensions. It further aids a configuration of information requirements into an information space, which covers the information required for the described problem. A case study has been conducted using this approach to the use of the set of techniques of MITAIS

Big data architecture for pervasive healthcare: a literature review

Pervasive healthcare aims to deliver deinstitutionalised healthcare services to patients anytime and anywhere. Pervasive healthcare involves remote data collection through mobile devices and sensor network which the data is usually in large volume, varied formats and high frequency. The nature of big data such as volume, variety, velocity and veracity, together with its analytical capabilities com-plements the delivery of pervasive healthcare. However, there is limited research in intertwining these two domains. Most research focus mainly on the technical context of big data application in the healthcare sector. Little attention has been paid to a strategic role of big data which impacts the quality of healthcare services provision at the organisational level. Therefore, this paper delivers a conceptual view of big data architecture for pervasive healthcare via an intensive literature review to address the aforementioned research problems. This paper provides three major contributions: 1) identifies the research themes of big data and pervasive healthcare, 2) establishes the relationship between research themes, which later composes the big data architecture for pervasive healthcare, and 3) sheds a light on future research, such as semiosis and sense-making, and enables practitioners to implement big data in the pervasive healthcare through the proposed architecture

Medical service unity: an effective approach for medical care in rural areas in China

Medical care in rural China has long suffered because of a concentration of medical resources in major hospitals in cities. The patients in rural areas thus do not have affordable access to quality medical services. To tackle such issues, a tiered medical scheme (TMS) was promoted by the Chinese State Council in 2015. It divides hospitals into three tiers and encourages collaborations among different tiers within a region in order to provide better accessibility to medical care for patients in rural areas. The implementation of the TMS policy has not been successful, because the previous funding model, which allocated funding to each hospital according to the number of patients treated, did not facilitate close collaborations between different hospitals. In this report, the medical service unity (MSU) approach, which has been piloted in Funan county, is reported. The MSU organises the tiered hospitals as a unity in terms of medical capabilities and financial abilities. With the radical reform of financial decentralisation, three flows are thereby enabled: the funding flow binds together the hospitals into a unity, the patient flow shares the load across the providers and eases barriers to access, and the resource flow ensures accessibility and affordability for patients. The MSU approach has been shown by the pilot project in Funan to be effective for the realisation of the TMS policy, benefiting hospitals, doctors and patients. The successful experience of the Funan MSU could be introduced to other regions across China and other countries. In particular, future finance reform policies for the health system would largely benefit the health reforms and especially the decentralisation of medical resources to rural areas

A rapidly moving target: Conformance with e-health standards for mobile computing

The rapid adoption and evolution of mobile applications in health is posing significant challenges in terms of standards development, standards adoption, patient safety, and patient privacy. This is a complex continuum to navigate. There are many competing demands from the standards development process, to the use by clinicians and patients. In between there are compliance and conformance measures to be defined to ensure patient safety, effective use with integration into clinical workflow, and the protection of data and patient privacy involved in data collection and exchange. The result is a composite and intricate mixture of stakeholders, legislation, and policy together with national and individual perspectives. The challenges for standards development are numerous and include the cross over from traditional medical devices and mobile devices with apps, as well as harmonisation for consistent semantic terminology, and the diverse range of standards required in mobile health solutions. These issues affect the ability of conformance and compliance to be undertaken. Additionally, the need for interoperability in development of safe and secure mHealth software whilst being mindful of the implications for patient safety is vital. Conformance and compliance to established international standards is the first and, at present, the only step in meeting the mobile health challenges

Performing knowledge requirements analysis for public organisations in a Virtual Learning Environment: a social network analysis approach

This paper describes an application of Social Network Analysis methods for identification of knowledge demands in public organisations. Affiliation networks established in a postgraduate programme were analysed. The course was executed in a distance education mode and its students worked on public agencies. Relations established among course participants were mediated through a virtual learning environment using Moodle. Data available in Moodle may be extracted using knowledge discovery in databases techniques. Potential degrees of closeness existing among different organisations and among researched subjects were assessed. This suggests how organisations could cooperate for knowledge management and also how to identify their common interests. The study points out that closeness among organisations and research topics may be assessed through affiliation networks. This opens up opportunities for applying knowledge management between organisations and creating communities of practice. Concepts of knowledge management and social network analysis provide the theoretical and methodological basis