Exploring metadata standards for competence descriptions in the business & management domain

This paper explores the development and use of competency metadata standards. As there has recently been a surge of a number of standards to address the challenge of representing competencies and there is a rising need to develop a common methodology, as well as methods and tools for developing, reusing, adapting, integrating such standards, this research is now becoming important and timely. We explore this within the context of the OpenScout project, which is building a federation of repositories with content in the areas of business and management. Thus this study is limited to metadata standards for competencies in the business and management fields, but it is aimed that the lessons from this domain can transfer to other fields and will inform the wider debate on the development and use of such standards. The paper revisits a set of standards for competence descriptions and provides recommendations as to which standard would suit better the nature of the repository, the requirements of stakeholders, and the Open Content resources. In particular, the paper proposes an adaptation and extension of the IEEE-RCD model, employing an application profiling approach, and taking into account the granularity of the European Qualifications Framework and the requirements of Open Content resources.OpenScout project (Contract no.: 428016, “Skill based scouting of open user-generated and community-improved content for management education and training”

The NPFIT strategy for information security of care record service

The National Programme for IT in England doesn’t have a one-document strategy for its information security of the Care Records Service, which is the national EHR system. This paper provides a comprehensive understanding of the information security strategy of England’s EHR system by presenting its different information security issues such as consent mechanisms, access control, sharing level, and related legal and regulations documents

Evaluating health information system projects using analytical and modeling methods

In recent years the value of the use of evaluation methods in all aspects of economic sectors, including the field of health care, has been increasingly recognized. The thrust of this paper is to explore the potential use of a) Cost-Benefit Analysis and b) Simulation and Modeling methods in estimating the value of Health Information System (HIS) projects. These methods were chosen for consideration as the most appropriate, primarily because CBA can measure delivered value of HIS interventions by weighting cost and benefits and identifying what is more socially desirable, while Simulation and Modeling tools can be used to estimate the future value of health care changes concerning HIS. The paper discusses these two families of methods, their evaluation potential is analyzed, and arguments for and against the use of each method are presented. Finally, methodological considerations and limitations are discussed and areas for future research are suggested

Towards an evaluation framework for medical web applications

Copyright @ 2013 EMCIS.The main aim of this study is to review and analyse various evaluation frameworks used to assess the operational effectiveness of various Information Technology (IT) processes/applications and identify their strengths in order to form a new holistic framework for economic evaluation of web applications. This research aims to address the need for a new holistic evaluation framework for the purpose of the evaluation of the medical web applications. Over the last decade more and more, companies used accountancy techniques such as the frameworks analysed in this research. This new holistic framework that was developed will include also steps regarding the indirect and intangible costs and benefits identification and their incorporation in the evaluation process. Moreover the new emerging market of the medical websites and the embedded on them web applications requires also a new evaluation framework that will provide accurate results in the estimation of the efficiency of an investment on them. The paper first presents an introduction about why economic evaluation is important when evaluating the Information Technology in organizations. Various studies are reviewed, which highlight the ever increasing importance of integrating economic evaluation processes, such as Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) and Return on Investment (ROI), into systems and processes of organizations and economic organizations, and analyse the factors that govern their role. Finally, the evaluation frameworks and methods that are found in these studies should be used as a part of a proactive systematic action plan that the organizations could use to avoid budget reduction due to incorrect planning. The next part of this study includes a comprehensive presentation and review of past frameworks used to evaluate Information Technology. The frameworks that are reviewed are the Framework for evaluation of information systems, the Information Technology Adoption Model (ITAM), the Total Evaluation and Acceptance Methodology (TEAM) framework, the ROI Process Model and HOT-fit evaluation framework for Health Information Systems

Machines and machinations: The integrated care record service in the UK national health service

This paper examines the use of Actor Network Theory (ANT) as a lens to get a better understanding of the implementation of the Integrated Care Record Service (ICRS) in the UK National Health Service (NHS). Actor Network Theory has been deployed in various environments to achieve a better understanding of the roles of not only the humans but also the artifacts that constitute, in this case, healthcare networks of services and organisations. The theory is used as a means of supporting real world interventions, providing a richer understanding of complexities involved and thereby helps management to make better decisions. This study also explores Latour’s concept of machines as machinations, whose role is to translate other actors into the network. We propose ICRS as a fruitful empirical context for the use of ANT to support decision making for actors in health care provision. Actor Network Theory (ANT) is well-suited for use in the socio-technical evaluation of IS into the ICRS project because this approach treats human and non-human actors symmetrically. This approach facilitates a more thorough examination of the ways in which information technology is enabled or restricted in social processes

A survey of simulation techniques in commerce and defence

Despite the developments in Modelling and Simulation (M&S) tools and techniques over the past years, there has been a gap in the M&S research and practice in healthcare on developing a toolkit to assist the modellers and simulation practitioners with selecting an appropriate set of techniques. This study is a preliminary step towards this goal. This paper presents some results from a systematic literature survey on applications of M&S in the commerce and defence domains that could inspire some improvements in the healthcare. Interim results show that in the commercial sector Discrete-Event Simulation (DES) has been the most widely used technique with System Dynamics (SD) in second place. However in the defence sector, SD has gained relatively more attention. SD has been found quite useful for qualitative and soft factors analysis. From both the surveys it becomes clear that there is a growing trend towards using hybrid M&S approaches

Nonaxisymmetric Neutral Modes in Rotating Relativistic Stars

We study nonaxisymmetric perturbations of rotating relativistic stars. modeled as perfect-fluid equilibria. Instability to a mode with angular dependence $\exp(im\phi)$ sets in when the frequency of the mode vanishes. The locations of these zero-frequency modes along sequences of rotating stars are computed in the framework of general relativity. We consider models of uniformly rotating stars with polytropic equations of state, finding that the relativistic models are unstable to nonaxisymmetric modes at significantly smaller values of rotation than in the Newtonian limit. Most strikingly, the m=2 bar mode can become unstable even for soft polytropes of index $N \leq 1.3$, while in Newtonian theory it becomes unstable only for stiff polytropes of index $N \leq 0.808$. If rapidly rotating neutron stars are formed by the accretion-induced collapse of white dwarfs, instability associated with these nonaxisymmetric, gravitational-wave driven modes may set an upper limit on neutron-star rotation. Consideration is restricted to perturbations that correspond to polar perturbations of a spherical star. A study of axial perturbations is in progress.Comment: 57 pages, 9 figure

Innermost stable circular orbits around magnetized rotating massive stars

In 1998, Shibata and Sasaki [Phys. Rev. D 58, 104011 (1998)] presented an approximate analytical formula for the radius of the innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO) of a neutral test particle around a massive, rotating and deformed source. In the present paper, we generalize their expression by including the magnetic dipole moment. We show that our approximate analytical formulas are accurate enough by comparing them with the six-parametric exact solution calculated by Pach\'on et. al. [Phys. Rev. D 73, 104038 (2006)] along with the numerical data presented by Berti and Stergioulas [MNRAS 350, 1416 (2004)] for realistic neutron stars. As a main result, we find that in general, the radius at ISCO exhibits a decreasing behavior with increasing magnetic field. However, for magnetic fields below 100GT the variation of the radius at ISCO is negligible and hence the non-magnetized approximate expression can be used. In addition, we derive approximate analytical formulas for angular velocity, energy and angular momentum of the test particle at ISCO.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

Constraining phases of quark matter with studies of r-mode damping in neutron stars

The r-mode instability in rotating compact stars is used to constrain the phase of matter at high density. The color-flavor-locked phase with kaon condensation (CFL-K0) and without (CFL) is considered in the temperature range 10^8K < T <10^{11} K. While the bulk viscosity in either phase is only effective at damping the r-mode at temperatures T > 10^{11} K, the shear viscosity in the CFL-K0 phase is the only effective damping agent all the way down to temperatures T > 10^8 K characteristic of cooling neutron stars. However, it cannot keep the star from becoming unstable to gravitational wave emission for rotation frequencies f ~ 56-11 Hz at T ~ 10^8-10^9 K. Stars composed almost entirely of CFL or CFL-K0 matter are ruled out by observation of rapidly rotating neutron stars, indicating that dissipation at the quark-hadron interface or nuclear crust interface must play a key role in damping the instability.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figure