e-Mahtari – Improving Maternal Healthcare in Rural India through Information and Communication Technologies

People living in rural areas in developing nations have limited access to quality healthcare. According to a recent United Nations report, most developing nations will not reach their millennium development goals related to maternal and child care. Lack of infrastructure creates a challenge in deploying information and communication technologies (ICT) to extend the reach of healthcare to rural areas. This study reports on a successful implementation of a low cost innovative mobile phone-based health information system to improve maternal and child care in rural India. A case study research method was used with the Practice Lens providing the theoretical framework for the investigation. The findings enrich the ICT for development (ICT4D) literature, and inform health policy makers and technology designers interested in creating innovative solutions to healthcare problems in resource-starved regions of the world

A Collaborative Approach to Creating ICT-based Sustainable Development

A large number of ICT-based development projects don’t survive beyond the initial implementation stage and fail to deliver the promised outcome. This report addresses the critical research question of how to create sustainable development through the use of ICT. Using a case study research method, we investigate a telemedicine project implemented by OTTET, a non-governmental organization, to deliver healthcare to the rural poor. OTTET Telemedicine showcases the benefits of the public private partnership (PPP) model in implementing ICT-based sustainable development. OTTET leveraged this partnership to successfully implement a comprehensive strategy that combined IT implementation with development of skilled human resources at the local level, and poverty alleviation through stimulation of micro-entrepreneurship. Effective collaboration between the state government and OTTET is a key to the success of OTTET Telemedicine. Lessons learned from the telemedicine project are presented and their implications for implementing ICT-based projects for sustainable development are discussed

Mobile Clinical Decision Support Systems – A Systematic Review

In this review article, we provide a descriptive analysis of the current state of mobile decision support systems in the healthcare domain based on studies published in the following databases: Business Source Complete, CINAHL, Cochrane library, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, PubMed, ScienceDirect and Web of Science databases. A total of 29 studies were identified and analyzed to understand the current state of development, evaluation efforts, usability and challenges to adoption by patients and care providers. Our aim is to evaluate these systems and identify the key challenges which hinders their widespread adoption. Although, mobile based decision support systems in healthcare context have the potential to improve clinical decision making, the current state with low adoption rate and early stage of development need to be addressed for successful health outcomes

Assessing Personality Profiles of Software Developers in Agile Development Teams

Agile methodologies are changing the way we develop software. Their emphasis on team-oriented development, joint code ownership, and reliance on people rather than predefined processes to guide activities, is transforming software development into a socio-technical process. As methodologies become increasingly more people and team-oriented, there is an urgent need to investigate the personality profiles of software developers and their likely impact on the productivity of the development team. A review of the IS research literature on personality studies found Jungian typology operationalized as Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) to be the most popular approach for assessing personality profiles. We compared the Five Factor Model (FFM) of personality, which is currently gaining popularity among personality psychologists, with MBTI. Our analysis, based on extant research literature in personality psychology and group behavior, suggests that FFM not only provides better measures for all factors that are measured by MBTI, but it also allows us to assess Neuroticism, an important personality trait that is of interest to researchers studying work groups, such as the agile development team. Our finding has important implications for researchers studying the agile development process. It is also highly relevant to studies investigating the personality profiles of IS professionals. Thus, our study attempts to bring in fresh insights from Personality Psychology, our reference discipline, to enrich IS research

Factors Influencing Adoption of Open Source Software - An Exploratory Study

Open Source Software (OSS), an example of an IS innovation, provides an alternative to proprietary software for organizations. Despite its free availability, OSS has not been universally adopted. While IS innovation has been extensively studied, there is a dearth of research literature on the adoption of OSS. Using a multi-site case study research method and a well known framework on the adoption of IS innovations, we explore this novel phenomenon and uncover critical factors that influence the adoption of OSS in organizations

Special Theme of Research in Information Systems Analysis and Design -III Teaching Systems Analysis and Design: A Case for the Object Oriented Approach

Object oriented technologies are widely accepted in software development. A survey of universities run in 2005 found that most schools recognize the need to teach OO languages. However, they continue to teach structured analysis and design. In this article we argue that this approach is a fundamental conceptual mismatch. Further, we contend that a pure OO curriculum involving OO languages and OO analysis and design is advisable in our efforts to equip our students with the knowledge to be successful as software developers. We offer ways to transition to a curriculum that emphasizes the OO philosophy of development

ICT4D: Exploring Emergent Themes

ICT4D research has gained prominence in the past few decades. This field has a unique context in terms of technology transfer, social embeddedness, and transformative interventions. In this paper, we investigate the key insights and prominent themes that define the ICT4D field. We explore thematic areas by analyzing abstracts of articles published between 2000 and 2017. We preprocess abstracts, visualize using VOSviewer and perform Topic Modeling using Latent Dirichlet Allocation algorithm for text analysis. We identify and interpret the dominant themes and find key insights that define and identify the ICT4D field

Task Mental Model and Software Developers’ Performance: An Experimental Investigation

Our understanding of factors influencing the effectiveness of software-development processes has evolved in recent times. However, few research studies have furthered our understanding of the cognitive factors underlying software development activities and their impact on performance and affective outcomes. To some extent, this may be attributed to the paucity of measurement approaches available for cognitive factors. In this study, we fill this gap by developing a measurement approach to capture and evaluate the quality of mental models. We investigate the efficacy of mental models in software development using the said approach. We assessed mental model quality by statistically comparing a software developer’s mental model with a referent model derived from multiple experts. Results of a controlled laboratory experiment suggest that a software developer’s mental model quality is a determinant of software quality. Further, we found this effect to be consistent across software development tasks of varying complexities. These results not only shed light on the impact of mental models in software development, but also have significant implications for stimulating future research on cognitive factors influencing software development practices

Mobile Health Privacy Concerns - A Systematic Review

Mobile health technologies have great potential to improve healthcare delivery. However, adoption of mobile applications raise many privacy concerns, and these issues must be addressed in order to facilitate technology adoption. We conducted a systematic review of the extant research literature to understand privacy concerns of patients and providers when they use mobile health applications. An extensive search of various databases including Web of Science, CINAHL, Cochrane Library, Embase, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, PubMed, ScienceDirect, and JMIR identified 37 unique articles on this topic. We analyzed these articles using a 3x3 framework with user type and usage type as the two dimensions. Our findings revealed that patient’s privacy concerns are heightened in the presence of certain disease types that carry a social stigma. Providers on the other hand are anxious about staying compliant with privacy regulations. Limitations of the study and directions for future research are discussed