A decision support tool for supporting individuals living with long-term conditions make informed choices: LTC-Choices tool for continuous healthcare

An increasing number of individuals are now living with some form of chronic, long-term condition (LTC). The holistic perspective of LTCs makes it important to acknowledge that priorities and decisions are in fluctuation over the course of an individual’s life. The landscape of digital healthcare is full of information systems that capture individuals’ health data, clinical guidelines and/or advice on health conditions, which taken together can help create a comprehensive overview of suitable lifestyle choices to optimise health and well-being. Despite this, there is no evidence of existing frameworks to support individuals living with LTCs from a continuum of care perspective. In this paper, we propose such a multidimensional model for a decision support tool – LTC-Choices. This tool was developed from existing work conducted by the authors around use of multicriteria to support health decisionmaking. We illustrate how LTC-Choices can be implemented using the example of individuals living post-stroke

Mobile Technology Use in a Multidisciplinary Healthcare Team - Factors and Challenges

Mobile technologies are being increasingly used in the health care sector to deliver quality care to patients through improved communication. While considerable research has been carried out in this area, there is limited research as to how mobile technology is being used by a multidisciplinary health care team (MHCT). This study aims to shed some light on the use of mobile technology by a MHCT. Using Activity Theory as a lens, we report on a qualitative study carried out in a large Australian hospital. This research identified the type of tasks and characteristics of the roles of the MHCT as important factors in understanding how they use mobile technology. The type of use for the technology was classified into spontaneous, restricted and potential use. Communication was found to be the key "spontaneous” use by the MHCT. The major challenges faced by the MHCT were privacy and security, and confidentiality

From Doing to Thinking in Meteorological Forecasting: Changing Work Practice Paradigms with Knowledge Management

This research aims to improve meteorological decision making through the application of knowledge manage- ment to the forecasting process. The aim of the research is not to solve the problems of forecasting but to provide appropriate support to enable forecasters to spend more time reflecting on the meteorological situation. To this end, we are engaged in change of the IT paradigm in this problem domain from the one based on scientific normative models to intelligent support. This change of paradigm allows forecasters not only perform the task but also to consistently share knowledge and learn from their collective experience. The paper also presents a system that allows diverse technologies to be employed in providing decision support for meteorological forecasting

Exploring Contradictions in the Use of Mobile Technology by Multidisciplinary Healthcare Teams

Modern healthcare is predominantly delivered by a multidisciplinary health care team (MHCT). MHCTs in hospitals have shown to improve health outcomes through enhanced communication and improved patient satisfaction. Mobile technology is increasingly being used in healthcare to provide quality care to patients. Healthcare professionals are embracing mobile technologies, as evidenced by substantial research contributions. This study is extending recent research into the use of mobile technology by a MHCT using Activity Theory as a theoretical lens. The current research focusses on exploring the contradictions that emerge as a result of the use of mobile technologies by the MHCTs. Based on data collected from four cases, this study reveals some significant contradictions focusing on the tool dimension; more specifically, i) Personal device Vs. Professional device ii) Flexibility of the device Vs. Restricted access iii) Anywhere, anytime Vs. Drawing boundaries

An intelligent content discovery technique for health portal content management

Background: Continuous content management of health information portals is a feature vital for its sustainability and widespread acceptance. Knowledge and experience of a domain expert is essential for content management in the health domain. The rate of generation of online health resources is exponential and thereby manual examination for relevance to a specific topic and audience is a formidable challenge for domain experts. Intelligent content discovery for effective content management is a less researched topic. An existing expert-endorsed content repository can provide the necessary leverage to automatically identify relevant resources and evaluate qualitative metrics.Objective: This paper reports on the design research towards an intelligent technique for automated content discovery and ranking for health information portals. The proposed technique aims to improve efficiency of the current mostly manual process of portal content management by utilising an existing expert-endorsed content repository as a supporting base and a benchmark to evaluate the suitability of new content.Methods: A model for content management was established based on a field study of potential users. The proposed technique is integral to this content management model and executes in several phases (ie, query construction, content search, text analytics and fuzzy multi-criteria ranking). The construction of multi-dimensional search queries with input from Wordnet, the use of multi-word and single-word terms as representative semantics for text analytics and the use of fuzzy multi-criteria ranking for subjective evaluation of quality metrics are original contributions reported in this paper.Results: The feasibility of the proposed technique was examined with experiments conducted on an actual health information portal, the BCKOnline portal. Both intermediary and final results generated by the technique are presented in the paper and these help to establish benefits of the technique and its contribution towards effective content management.Conclusions: The prevalence of large numbers of online health resources is a key obstacle for domain experts involved in content management of health information portals and websites. The proposed technique has proven successful at search and identification of resources and the measurement of their relevance. It can be used to support the domain expert in content management and thereby ensure the health portal is up-to-date and current

The Importance of Reliable Information Sources for Prospective Medical Travellers

Expectations of completing PhDs for job readiness, are increasing. Information Systems (IS) PhDs face the challenge of appreciating the multidisciplinary and multi-paradigmatic diversity of the discipline, demanding a breadth of knowledge beyond that expected in many other disciplines. In addition, PhD students in Australian universities are constrained to a 3+ year enrolment, as compared for example, to the more common 4 and 5 year enrolments in North American universities. These demands require that IS PhD students in Australia be synergistic in their choice of activities during enrolment. With the aim of maximizing the value of the PhD experience, the study reported herein explores synergy between research and teaching. More specifically, this research-in-progress (RIP) paper reports a programme design for training PhD students, from involvement as supervisors of coursework Masters students’ research projects

A Comparative Study of Critical Success Factors for General and Healthcare Business Intelligence Systems

Critical Success Factor (CSF) research provides a useful instrument for better managing a project and driving it to success. Research about CSFs for business intelligence (BI) systems and industry-specific CSFs have been noted; however, scant research has been conducted to investigate CSFs for healthcare BI projects. This paper adopted a mixed method approach to investigate differences between CSFs of BI systems in general and BI systems in the healthcare industry. We found that although CSFs of healthcare BI are similar to those of general BI, there is a significant overlap between CSFs for BI development and use. This finding supports the intertwined relationship between success of different BI project phases, which has yet been acknowledged in BI and IS success models

Towards an Organisational Perspective to Promote Knowledge Strategy

This paper presents empirical research of an organisational perspective for promotion of knowledge strategy. Using this perspective as a guide, it presents an exploratory case study that examines how an organisation can be analysed for better promoting knowledge strategy. The chosen case is a firm daily involved with the design and development of new products and technologies. This research contributes to the wider knowledge management project, foregrounding intelligence and strategy as interactive concepts

Exploring Personalised Features of Health Information Websites – an Empirical Review

Personalisation of health information websites and portals is becoming a commonplace practice. Personalisation aims to improve users’ online experiences by providing relevant medical information in a timely manner. However, reported limited success of the health information websites demonstrates that users are dissatisfied with them. In the service quality theory, user satisfaction is linked to the consistency by which the service attributes are delivered. This study regards personalised features as service attributes and examines the consistency of their functionality through the conduct of a competitive analysis of eight most popular American and Australian health information websites. The results demonstrate a lack of consistency in the functionality of personalised features which might be linked to the lack of user satisfaction with the health information websites. Further research is needed to establish what functionality of personalised features is expected by users of the health information websites to increase their satisfaction and, subsequently, continuous use of these websites