Assessing the impact of physicians' social capital on decision making quality mediated by knowledge sharing in a virtual community of practice: an empirical quantitative analysis

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University London.Purpose - Healthcare (HC) is a globally expensive investment, suffering from service quality, due to medical errors caused by physicians’ poor decisions making (DM). Current published literature: (1) encourages clinical DM research to reduce diagnostic errors and (2) stresses on the dearth of means for practitioners’ knowledge shared DM; this research focuses on knowledge sharing for improving medical DM quality through physicians’ social capital (SC) in a virtual community of practice (VCoP). Physicians join a virtual community (VC) to share clinical practice knowledge to aid medical DM. This study aims to assess the effect of physicians’ SC on medical DM and assess the mediating role of knowledge sharing quality, between physicians’ SC and medical DM quality since research lacks to investigate the impact of knowledge management (KM) tools in a HC context. VCoP is a KM tool and medical DM quality is a HC topic of this study. Design/methodology/approach – This positivist, quantitative research utilizes non-experimental survey to empirically assess its conceptual framework. After attaining an ethical approval, from Brunel Business School Research Ethics Committee, online survey was pre-tested and pilot tested for clarity and validity. 10 non-physician Ph.D. academics voluntarily participated during the survey’s pre-test phase. The survey was amendment for its pilot study phase; conducted in “plastic surgery yahoo group” VC. 31 physician VC members voluntarily participated. Again, the survey was amended and distributed for main data collection from 204 voluntary SurveyMonkey’s VC’s physician members. Findings – Data was analysed using SPSS 20 and LISREL 8.80 by means of confirmatory factor analysis and Structural Equation Modeling. Empirical findings supported this study’s four main hypotheses as well as supported this study’s initially proposed conceptual framework. Originality/value – This study customized the Honeycomb framework to establish a definition of professional physicians; HC VCs followed by identifying 51 VCs from social networking platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. This study also fulfilled its aim and hence proposed a structurally fit conceptual framework. Keywords –Virtual Community of Practice; Healthcare Knowledge Management; Confirmatory Factor Analysis; Structural Equation Modelin

Assessing the impact of Physicians’ Virtual Communities on their medical Decision Making quality

Medical decision making is daunting to physicians of its unclear benefits for improving patient care while such decisions are evidence based and also are from the social capital of resources of the advises shared between their peers. Past scholars have reported great deal of medical errors and misdiagnoses caused by physicians: a situation that is degrading healthcare quality. It is not surprising why past research also stressed on the importance to empirically explore the effect of physicians’ virtual community on their medical decision making quality. Virtual communities are a promising initiative in the healthcare sector. This paper describes how the participation of VC members is possible through the application of the Social Capital Theory’s three dimensions in order to assess the effectiveness of physicians’ virtual community so they can make better quality of medical decisions. Such is depicted in this paper’s conceptual model. The model was empirically tested for its validity and reliability using an adapted survey for which data was collected from 204 SurveyMonkey virtual community physician members. The empirical evidence supports the hypothesis of the conceptual model through physicians’ identification and shared vision, i.e. two pre-requisites for medical DM

Blending of Physicians’ Leadership and Decision-Making Style Within Virtual Platforms for Improving Service Quality

Literature demands for improving the quality of healthcare services, in response to high reported patient dissatisfaction from physicians’ diagnostic errors. Social networks are a promising platform facilitating healthcare professionals for knowledge-shared-decision making (DM), in addition to leadership. Past research argues on the vitality of decisions based on appropriate leadership using knowledge management. Hence, this literature review paper proposes a conceptual framework making one proposition viable for future quantitative empirical evidencing, bearing theoretical and managerial implications

E-services and M-services Using IoT: An Assessment of the Kingdom of Bahrain

The Kingdom of Bahrain has been reported as the pioneers of the e-government within the Arabian Gulf region. Such particularly is the pride reflective within the healthcare sector. With e-government ranked first among all Arab countries and thirteen worldwide, e-health paved new heights. Its successes further resonated during the COVID-19 era. Various stakeholders in the healthcare sector moved beyond e-services. Thanks to the Internet of Things, have been able to appreciate m-health. It is certain, that the country practiced strategies to assure itself towards a fast-growing Internet users base, and this is particularly evidenced through its citizens and the expat populations. The aim of this study is to explore how the Kingdom of Bahrain was able to succeed in its e-service, e-government, and e-health services to transform from a bureaucratic model to a new IoT based m-health and m-government paradigm. A content analysis of the Kingdom of Bahrain intellectual resources, i.e., their websites as well as journal and conference papers, etc., this chapter extends an overview of how Bahrain was able to transform to an e/m-government and e/m-health paradigm, along with theoretical and practical implication with suggestions for future research are also put forth in this chapter

Diffusing IT Competence with Business Analytics Enables Data-Driven Culture for Achieving Evidence-Based Managerial Decisions for Assuring Sustained Competitive Advantage: A Literature Survey

Globalized economies have organizations seeking ways to implement Business Analytics (BA) though ample organizations fail in such initiatives. Hence, scholars embark on IT competence enabled BA to inspire a data-driven culture. Such is a crucial prerequisite for fostering long term organizational sustainable competitiveness. Even though the above rationale receives widespread attention, there is scant evidence comprehending whether IT competence enabled BA to empower an organizational data-driven culture to achieve long-term sustained competitive advantage. Current literature reviews are conducted predominantly through journals and academic conference papers. The literature review reveals a conceptual model composed of three propositions viable for future research\u27s empirical confirmation. This study defuses IT competence, business analytics, data-driven culture, and organizational competition in one model, proving through critiqued literature that business analytics inspires mined data visualizations that encourage a data-driven organizational culture when enabled by IT competence. Such a culture, in turn, helps an organization achieve the evidence-based managerial decisions which help organizations sustain a long-term competitive advantage. Such a model bares theoretical and practical implications also portrayed in the article

The Propensity to Use FinTech: Input from Bankers in the Kingdom of Bahrain

© 2020 World Scientific Publishing Co. This study aims to assess why users are willing/hesitant to continue using FinTech services based on their perceived benefits and risks pertaining to the use of FinTech technology. Data was collected, using an adopted survey instrument, from bankers based in Bahrain, the financial and FinTech hub of the Middle East. Data analysis was applied to assess the reliability and validity of this study\u27s conceptual model along with its nine hypotheses with 374 valid responses subsequently being analysed using multiple regression via SPSS version 23. The empirical findings of this study supported all the hypotheses, revealing that both perceived benefit and risks affect the intent to continue using FinTech. Perceived benefit has a stronger effect than the perceived risk, and convenience perceived most beneficial while financial risk perceived riskiest for using FinTech technology by the bankers of Bahrain

FinTech in Bahrain: The Role of FinTech in Empowering Women

The purpose of this paper is to review the definition of Financial Technology (FinTech) discipline from different perspectives and scholars. Moreover, the research will explore FinTech history and its evolution stages throughout the years based on existing literatures. In addition, it will present the different concepts and categories of FinTech. The research will also discuss FinTech implementation in the Kingdom of Bahrain and focus on women role within the FinTech, and the initiatives taken to empower women within the industry. The research is based on review of literatures and interviews to explore women role and achievements within Fintech in Bahrain, and it proposes recommendations for future thorough research

QoS-Aware Error Recovery in Wireless Body Sensor Networks Using Adaptive Network Coding

Wireless body sensor networks (WBSNs) for healthcare and medical applications are real-time and life-critical infrastructures, which require a strict guarantee of quality of service (QoS), in terms of latency, error rate and reliability. Considering the criticality of healthcare and medical applications, WBSNs need to fulfill users/applications and the corresponding network’s QoS requirements. For instance, for a real-time application to support on-time data delivery, a WBSN needs to guarantee a constrained delay at the network level. A network coding-based error recovery mechanism is an emerging mechanism that can be used in these systems to support QoS at very low energy, memory and hardware cost. However, in dynamic network environments and user requirements, the original non-adaptive version of network coding fails to support some of the network and user QoS requirements. This work explores the QoS requirements of WBSNs in both perspectives of QoS. Based on these requirements, this paper proposes an adaptive network coding-based, QoS-aware error recovery mechanism for WBSNs. It utilizes network-level and user-/application-level information to make it adaptive in both contexts. Thus, it provides improved QoS support adaptively in terms of reliability, energy efficiency and delay. Simulation results show the potential of the proposed mechanism in terms of adaptability, reliability, real-time data delivery and network lifetime compared to its counterparts