Radical Technological Innovation and Perception: A Non-Physician Practitioners’ Perspective

Radical technological innovations, such as chatbots, fundamentally alter many aspects of healthcare organizations. For example, they transform how clinicians care for their patients. Despite the potential benefits, they cannot be integrated into practice without the support of the clinicians whose jobs are affected. While previous research shed important light on physicians’ perceptions, little is known on nonphysician practitioners view said innovations. This paper reports on a qualitative study, involving 10 nonphysician clinicians from Ontario, Canada, conducted to determine the perceptions and cognitions of clinicians regarding radical innovation and their previous experiences with technological change. Results indicate that clinicians as semi-autonomous agents can interpret and act upon their environment with regard to determining how innovations such as chatbots are implemented

Three Studies on Multi-attribute Market Mechanisms in E-procurement

Successful e-procurement depends on selecting the appropriate mechanisms that comprise rules governing and facilitating transaction process. Existing mechanisms have theoretical or practical limitations such as limited number of attributes, disclosure of buyer’s preferences and costly processes. The present research addresses these issues through three studies. Study 1 presents two feasible mechanisms for multi-attribute multi-supplier transactions. They allow buyers to control preference representation and information revelation, assuring that suppliers obtain sufficient information in making effective proposals while protecting confidential information. Following the design-science approach, the mechanisms are implemented to support multi-attribute reverse auctions and multi-bilateral negotiations. Study 2 examines the revelation of information in multi-attribute reverse auctions. Three revelation rules are formulated with admissible bids, winning bids and all bidders’ bids. Their effects on the process, outcomes and bidders’ assessment are tested in two experiments. The results show significant improvement in process efficiency when more information is revealed. The suppliers reached better outcomes with either admissible bids only or all bidders’ bids, while the buyers gained more when revealing the winning bids only. Bidders were more satisfied with the outcomes and system when more information was provided. Study 3 compares multi-attribute reverse auctions and multi-bilateral negotiations in both laboratory and online experiments. The results show that auctions are more efficient than negotiations in terms of the process. Auctions led to greater gains for the buyers, whereas more balanced contracts were reached in negotiations. Suppliers’ assessment was affected by their outcomes, and the winning suppliers were more satisfied with the process, outcomes and system. The buyer’s role was also examined. Different types of information conveyed from buyer influence suppliers’ behavior in making bids/offers and concessions, which in turn affected buyer’s gains. This research provides implications to future studies and practices in e-procurement, in particular, the formulation of a procedure of two multi-attribute mechanisms and the formulation of general guidelines for strategic use of different mechanisms in various e-procurement contexts

Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Stocks and Their Relationship with Plant and Soil Dynamics of Degraded and Artificial Restoration Grasslands in an Alpine Region

Land disturbances and management approaches can significantly alter grassland soils. Therefore, understanding the carbon and nitrogen storage accompanying plant and soil physical and chemical properties due to anthropogenic disturbance and different management strategies is important. In our study, we investigated carbon and nitrogen storage in artificial grasslands with different durations of restoration and native grasslands with different levels of degradation. We found that total carbon and nitrogen were significantly higher five years after restoration than after seven and nine years, but decreased due to grassland degradation. Furthermore, soil carbon and nitrogen had a close relationship with plant and soil factors, as reflected by a correlation index. The above-mentioned results indicate that artificial grasslands can be used as an effective method to restore “black-beach” soil grassland. In the long term, however, human intervention should be implemented to prevent the degradation of artificial grasslands

Factors Influencing the Clinician\u27s Intention to Use AI Systems in Healthcare: A Value-Based Approach

Healthcare systems worldwide are in rapid transition, moving from traditional, paper-based practices to computerized approaches to improve service delivery. Consequently, interest in AI applications within medicine has been growing exponentially. The benefits of adopting such technology in a data-driven healthcare environment have been readily studied. However, few studies have investigated whether these AI-based medical interventions would be valued and used by clinicians. Thus, this study aims to extend a value-based adoption model (VAM) within the North American healthcare context to assess the clinician\u27s positive and negative views of AI and whether their perceptions of risks and benefits influence their intention to adopt the technology within their practice

Role of IS Job Shadows on College Student Major Selection

The Information Systems (IS) Job Shadow program allows undergraduate students to engage in an experiential learning opportunity with IS professionals. The job shadow includes a half-day visit with a local business to learn about IS, how IS supports the business, and careers within IS. This research examines the role of the IS job shadow on post-secondary undergraduate student self-efficacy and behavior intentions by measuring student intent on pursuing the IS major and IS career both before and after the IS job shadow

Patient Trust and Resistance towards Patient Portals

Health information technologies (HITs) as facilitators of chronic disease self-management remains an ongoing topic for information system researchers. This research addresses a gap in knowledge surrounding patient trust and resistance towards using these technologies, specifically patient portals. The method used to accomplish this study is through the dispersion of a quantitative survey to participants in Ontario, Canada. This survey focused on questions related to the four variables that have been identified through the literature to be important in determining patient resistance of HITs. The results indicate the importance of patient trust in mitigating their resistance to using these technologies

Procurement Auctions and Negotiations: An Empirical Comparison

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce on Aug. 2, 2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/10919392.2017.1363576.Real world procurement transactions often involve multiple attributes and multiple vendors. Successful procurement involves vendor selection through appropriate market mechanisms. The advancement of information technologies has enabled different mechanisms to be applied to similar procurement situations. Advantages and disadvantages of using such mechanisms remain unclear. The presented research compares two types of mechanisms: multi-attribute reverse auctions and multi-attribute multi-bilateral negotiations in e-procurement. Both laboratory and online experiments were carried out to examine their effects on the process, outcomes and suppliers’ assessment. The results show that in procurement, reverse auctions were more efficient than negotiations in terms of the process. Auctions also led to greater gains for the buyers than negotiations but the suppliers’ profit was lower in auctions. The buyer and the winning supplier jointly reached more efficient and balanced contracts in negotiations than in auctions. The results also show that the suppliers’ assessment was affected by their outcomes: the winning suppliers had a more positive assessment towards the process, outcomes and the system. The findings are consistent in both the laboratory and online settings. The implications of this study for practitioners and researchers are discussed

Teaching case article : Sowingo : Promoting Innovations in Dental Office Inventory Management

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Journal of Information Technology Case and Application Research, 20:1, 23-35, available online on Dec. 20, 2018 at DOI: 10.1080/15228053.2018.1557881Unhappy with erroneous and inefficient inventory management affecting his dental practice, Dr. Bhatti, a seasoned dentist, founded Sowingo in 2012 to create a solution tailor-made for busy health practitioners. Since then, the company enjoyed a few years’ unfettered monopoly and grew to have six employees with over a 100 clients under its belt. Despite offering an innovative inventory management system in the market, however, Sowingo is challenged to continue its growth, as potential clients are unwilling to forego the error-prone and manual way of managing inventory. What will be the next strategic direction for Sowingo

Comparative functional characterization of the CSR-1 22G-RNA pathway in Caenorhabditis nematodes

As a champion of small RNA research for two decades, Caenorhabditis elegans has revealed the essential Argonaute CSR-1 to play key nuclear roles in modulating chromatin, chromosome segregation and germline gene expression via 22G-small RNAs. Despite CSR-1 being preserved among diverse nematodes, the conservation and divergence in function of the targets of small RNA pathways remains poorly resolved. Here we apply comparative functional genomic analysis between C. elegans and Caenorhabditis briggsae to characterize the CSR-1 pathway, its targets and their evolution. C. briggsae CSR-1-associated small RNAs that we identified by immunoprecipitation-small RNA sequencing overlap with 22G-RNAs depleted in cbr-csr-1 RNAi-treated worms. By comparing 22G-RNAs and target genes between species, we defined a set of CSR-1 target genes with conserved germline expression, enrichment in operons and more slowly evolving coding sequences than other genes, along with a small group of evolutionarily labile targets. We demonstrate that the association of CSR-1 with chromatin is preserved, and show that depletion of cbr-csr-1 leads to chromosome segregation defects and embryonic lethality. This first comparative characterization of a small RNA pathway in Caenorhabditis establishes a conserved nuclear role for CSR-1 and highlights its key role in germline gene regulation across multiple animal species

Agrobacterium rhizogenes-mediated transformation of Superroot-derived Lotus corniculatus plants: a valuable tool for functional genomics

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Transgenic approaches provide a powerful tool for gene function investigations in plants. However, some legumes are still recalcitrant to current transformation technologies, limiting the extent to which functional genomic studies can be performed on. <it>Superroo</it>t of <it>Lotus corniculatus </it>is a continuous root cloning system allowing direct somatic embryogenesis and mass regeneration of plants. Recently, a technique to obtain transgenic <it>L. corniculatus </it>plants from <it>Superroot</it>-derived leaves through <it>A. tumefaciens-</it>mediated transformation was described. However, transformation efficiency was low and it took about six months from gene transfer to PCR identification.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In the present study, we developed an <it>A. rhizogenes</it>-mediated transformation of <it>Superroot</it>-derived <it>L. corniculatus </it>for gene function investigation, combining the efficient <it>A. rhizogenes</it>-mediated transformation and the rapid regeneration system of <it>Superroot</it>. The transformation system using <it>A. rhizogenes </it>K599 harbouring pGFPGUS<it>Plus </it>was improved by validating some parameters which may influence the transformation frequency. Using stem sections with one node as explants, a 2-day pre-culture of explants, infection with K599 at OD₆₀₀= 0.6, and co-cultivation on medium (pH 5.4) at 22°C for 2 days enhanced the transformation frequency significantly. As proof of concept, <it>Superroot</it>-derived <it>L. corniculatus </it>was transformed with a gene from wheat encoding an Na⁺/H⁺antiporter (<it>TaNHX2</it>) using the described system. Transgenic <it>Superroot </it>plants were obtained and had increased salt tolerance, as expected from the expression of <it>TaNHX2</it>.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>A rapid and efficient tool for gene function investigation in <it>L. corniculatus </it>was developed, combining the simplicity and high efficiency of the <it>Superroot </it>regeneration system and the availability of <it>A. rhizogenes</it>-mediated transformation. This system was improved by validating some parameters influencing the transformation frequency, which could reach 92% based on GUS detection. The combination of the highly efficient transformation and the regeneration system of <it>Superroot </it>provides a valuable tool for functional genomics studies in <it>L. corniculatus</it>.</p