Multicriteria analysis for evaluating knowledge management effectiveness in university’s administration

This paper presents a multicriteria analysis approach for evaluating knowledge management (KM) effectiveness in the university’s administration. A framework is presented for identifying important properties to be considered in the KM evaluation process. A fuzzy multicriteria analysis algorithm is developed for evaluating KM effectiveness in the university’s administration. As a result, the KM effectiveness can be properly assessed in a simple manner and effective decisions can be made for improving the KM implementation in the university. An example is presented for demonstrating the applicability of the proposed multicriteria analysis approach for effectively addressing the KM problem in real world settings

A unified view of enablers, barriers, and readiness of small to medium enterprises for e-business adoption

SMEs have been looking at expanding their market share by extending beyond their geographical boundaries and this is where electronic business has come to the forefront. The path to e-business adoption is ridden with barriers and understanding these along with the benefits it offers to SMEs is important. This chapter has reviewed the existing literature of barriers and benefits of e-business adoption by SMEs to identify the various enablers that can facilitate adoption. The chapter also provides an insight into e-readiness and analyses six existing tools that are used globally to measure e-readiness. Based on a comprehensive analysis, an holistic framework (Motivation Application Measurement Support (MAMS) e-readiness assessment framework) has been proposed. The framework can be utilized as a reference to assess, design and implement a supplementary strategic approach for the assessment of e-business readiness of SMEs. Further empirical research to test, amend and improve the MAMS framework can be undertaken in the future

Critical success factors for information systems implemention: An end user perspective

"Successfully implementing information systems (IS) projects is of critical importance to the prosperity and even survival of modern organizations (Joshia and Laurel, 1998; Umble et ai, 2003). This is because an effective use of IS for supporting the operations of modern organizations usually leads to significant improvements in organizational productivity (Mandai and Gunasekaran, 2003) and often provides organizations with crucial competitive advantages (Poon and Wagner, 2000)."--p. 80. Proceedings of the 2005 Information Resources Management Association International Conference, San Diego, California, USA, May 15-18, 2005

38P.MAMS : a unified approach for assessing e-readiness of SMEs

ICT adoption to facilitate business processes is a growing trend in today’s global environment. As SMEs play an important role in a country’s economy, they cannot lag behind in ICT adoption. In order to join the e-business bandwagon, SMEs need to understand the barriers in the path and the benefits offered by e-business adoption. This paper has reviewed the extant literature of barriers, benefits of e-business adoption before proposing some key enablers that facilitate the adoption. Six existing e-readiness tools that are used globally to measure e-readiness are also reviewed. The review of different aspects of e-business readiness has motivated their unification and the definition of an holistic framework (Motivation Application Measurement Support e-readiness framework). The MAMS framework can be utilized as a reference to assess, design and implement a supplementary strategic approach for e-business readiness of SMEs

A conceptual framework for evaluating the adoption of e-market for electronic business in small and medium-sized enterprises in Australia

Abstract: This paper presents a conceptual framework for evaluating the adoption of electronic market for electronic business in small and medium-sized enterprises in Australia. Such a conceptual framework is built on a comprehensive analysis of existing research in electronic market, in particular in relation to the value drivers and the critical success factors for adopting e-market in electronic business. Within the proposed framework, the current patterns and trends of electronic market adoption in Australia can be analyzed, and the emerging issues for making full use of the potential of electronic market for electronic business can be discussed

An integrated supply chain and logistics system

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Classification and rule generation for colon tumor gene expression data

Microarray genome studies discover the relationship between gene expression profiles and various diseases. This relationship generally introduces valuable quantitative information from genome profiles. The information facilitates drugs and therapeutics development to provide better treatments. In this paper we suggest that the statistical learning algorithm, Support Vector Machine (SVM) is a useful classification technique to classify genome profiles. Performance and usefulness of SVM is verified with colon tumor genome data. A comparison of SVM’s performance is made with another popular decision trees based classification technique C5.0. SVM is found to be superior to C5.0 in performance. However, SVM lacks the rule extraction capability. We extract rules to identify the responsible tissues for colon tumor using C5.0. The rules could be used with SVM to reduce the size of microarrays in future

Urine Concentration Does Not Affect Biochemical Testing for Non-adherence

Hypertension is one of the most important modifiable risk factor causing cardiovascular disease. Unfortunately, non-adherence to antihypertensive medications is frequently observed in hypertensive patients and can lead to an increase in morbidity and mortality. Until recently, there was no robust clinical method to objectively diagnose non-adherence. Recently, the detection of medications in urine or blood by mass spectrometry techniques such as liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS-MS) has been accepted as the diagnostic method of choice for the detection of non-adherence. Despite this, it is unclear whether the concentration of urine can affect the detection of medications in urine. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the effect of urine concentration on detection of antihypertensive medications by LC–MS-MS in which urine creatinine is used as an independent marker of urine concentration. Biochemical adherence results for 22 different medications (1,709 prescriptions) in 463 different subjects were converted to an adherence score. The adherence score was defined as the ratio of the total number of subjects in which the drug was detected to the total number of subjects to whom the drug was prescribed. The adherence scores for each medication were correlated with urine creatinine concentration for each medication. Non-adherence was observed in 47.1% of samples with a mean urine creatinine concentration of these samples of 9.4 ± 7.1 mmol/L. There was no significant difference between the urine creatinine concentrations in the detected vs non-detected groups for each of the 22 medications. Furthermore, there are no differences in adherence scores across the urine creatinine concentration. This is the first study to demonstrate that urine creatinine concentration does not affect the results of the adherence screening by LC–MS-MS.</p

An Innovative Chemical Adherence Test Demonstrates Very High Rates of Nonadherence to Oral Cardio-Metabolic Medications

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. About 13% of the world’s population are living with CKD; and over the last 20 years, there has been over a 40% increase in mortality rates due to CKD.1,2 Compared to patients without CKD, CKD stages G3a to G4 (estimated glomerular filtration rate 15–60 ml/min per 1.73 m2) is associated with a 2 to 3 fold increase in risk of cardiovascular disease mortality.3 It is estimated that about 17% to 74% of patients with CKD are nonadherent to their medications.4 Improvement in adherence has been identified as a key strategy to enhance cardiovascular outcomes.5 However, the diagnosis of nonadherence, until recently, was difficult due to the lack of objective tools in busy clinics because some subjective methods have been found to be unreliable.6 Chemical adherence testing (CAT) is a novel, objective, robust and clinically reliable test that uses liquid-chromatography tandem mass spectrometry to assess adherence to medications. A random spot urine or blood sample is screened to determine the presence or absence of 70 of the most common cardio-metabolic medications (Supplementary Table S1) (including antihypertensives, lipid lowering medications, and glucose lowering drugs).7 There are guidelines available to help implement the use of the test and address common questions about the clinical use of the test.7 Currently, CAT is being used in routine care in some specialist hypertension clinics across Europe and has been recommended by the European Society of Cardiology and the European Society of Hypertension as the method to be used to measure adherence in patients with suspected resistant hypertension.8 The use of CAT is limited outside of hypertension and to the best of our knowledge there has been no publication that has used CAT to diagnose medication nonadherence in renal patients. The aim of this study was therefore to demonstrate and highlight the usefulness of CAT to determine the prevalence of nonadherence to cardio-metabolic medications in patients attending routine renal clinics.</p

The Ready to Reduce Risk (3R) Study for a Group Educational Intervention With Telephone and Text Messaging Support to Improve Medication Adherence for the Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease: Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial.

BACKGROUND: Poor adherence to cardiovascular medications is associated with worse clinical outcomes. Evidence for effective education interventions that address medication adherence for the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease is lacking. The Ready to Reduce Risk (3R) study aims to investigate whether a complex intervention, involving group education plus telephone and text messaging follow-up support, can improve medication adherence and reduce cardiovascular risk. OBJECTIVE: This protocol paper details the design and rationale for the development of the 3R intervention and the study methods used. METHODS: This is an open and pragmatic randomized controlled trial with 12 months of follow-up. We recruited participants from primary care and randomly assigned them at a 1:1 frequency, stratified by sex and age, to either a control group (usual care from a general practitioner) or an intervention group involving 2 facilitated group education sessions with telephone and text messaging follow-up support, with a theoretical underpinning and using recognized behavioral change techniques. The primary outcome was medication adherence to statins. The primary measure was an objective, novel, urine-based biochemical measure of medication adherence. We also used the 8-item Morisky Medication Adherence Scale to assess medication adherence. Secondary outcomes were changes in total cholesterol, blood pressure, high-density lipoprotein, total cholesterol to high-density lipoprotein ratio, body mass index, waist to hip ratio, waist circumference, smoking behavior, physical activity, fruit and vegetable intake, patient activation level, quality of life, health status, health and medication beliefs, and overall cardiovascular disease risk score. We also considered process outcomes relating to acceptability and feasibility of the 3R intervention. RESULTS: We recruited 212 participants between May 2015 and March 2017. The 12-month follow-up data collection clinics were completed in April 2018, and data analysis will commence once all study data have been collected and verified. CONCLUSIONS: This study will identify a potentially clinically useful and effective educational intervention for the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease. Medication adherence to statins is being assessed using a novel urine assay as an objective measure, in conjunction with other validated measures. TRIAL REGISTRATION: International Standard Randomized Controlled Trial Number ISRCTN16863160; http://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN16863160 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/734PqfdQw). INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): DERR1-10.2196/11289