E-Health Strategies

Research contributions for this minitrack could address, but are not limited to:

• E-business strategy between healthcare organizations
• Strategic Information Systems Planning in healthcare organizations or related professional organizations
• National strategies for building IT architectures

• Healthcare Management Information Systems
• Healthcare network organizations
• Knowledge management and innovation in healthcare
• Standardization in healthcare
• Critical success factors and benchmarking in healthcare organizations
• Portfolio analysis of healthcare systems.
• Strategic alignment in healthcare
• Functional integration of healthcare systems
• Effectiveness of IS in healthcare organizations
• Strategic role of IS in healthcare organizations.

Robert A. Stegwee
Faculty of Technology & Management
University of Twente
P.O. Box 217
7500 AE Enschede
The Netherlands
r.a.stegwee@sms.utwente.nl

Healthcare Chain Workflow Management by Use of IT

Patient visits various organizations or units within organizations to get proper diagnosis and treatment. The role of healthcare workflow-management by use of IT is to adjust the contributions of those organizations or units in terms of timing, quality and functionality.

Some of these difficulties can be traced back to the heterogeneous nature of healthcare organizations. Professionals require a certain degree of autonomy, whilst workflow management requires a certain degree of standardization. Organizations or units need goals that fit to their specific practice, workflow management requires cooperative goals, or at least, goals that do not conflict. Also, standardization is needed to make full mutual adjustment of organizations possible, even though such standardization may unnecessarily complicate the way of working. As a result, a dedicated business transformation may be necessary. Healthcare organizations have to rethink their boundaries and have to make strategic alliances to be able to cope with the changes in the environment.

In this call for papers, we suggest ten topics:

1. Practical examples of workflow-management solutions in Healthcare, including reflection on how various problem-areas were managed.
2. Selection of aspects for inter-organizational workflow management, (e.g. time, quality, capacity)
3. Workflow management: choosing the degree of detail to work on.
4. The degree of inter-activity.
5. Workflow management: standards-based or problem-based?
6. Restructuring the workflow by use of IT, or, BPR to enable IT.
7. Managing professionals in relation to workflow-management,
8. Assessment of the management of the workflow.
9. Patient-centered processes and disease management support with IT
10. Relevance of IT for professional users

Dr Ir Roel Schuring
University of Twente
Address Update
R.W.Schuring@sms.utwente.nl

Data & Knowledge Management in Health Care

For this Minitrack, we invite papers that address all aspects of database systems, data warehousing, and knowledge management technologies as contributors to information infrastructures in health care. This includes analysis, design and development of database applications, information exchange systems, data mining techniques, and decision support systems.

Specific topics of interest include, but are not restricted to, the following:

• Analysis, Design, and Development of Database Systems for Healthcare Applications
• Data Warehousing for Healthcare Information
• Distributed Healthcare Information Infrastructures
• Data Standards for Healthcare Applications
• Data Mining techniques and Applications
• Data Modeling for Healthcare Applications
• Decision Support Systems
• Hospital and Clinical Information Systems
• Public Health Informatics
• Morbidity and Mortality Surveillance Systems
• Monitoring Systems for Biochemical Threats
• Bioterrorism Detection and Response

James Studnicki
Health Policy and Management
College of Public Health
University of South Florida
4202 E. Fowler Ave.
Tampa, FL 33620
(813) 974-6653
jstudnic@hsc.usf.edu
 

IT-Enabled Governance Structures in Health Care

Our minitrack focuses on the effect of ICT on the governance structures of health care. How does and should information and telecommunication technology affect them? Business process redesign is related to the issue, but governance structures are at a higher level both in importance and interest: business processes happen within the frames governance structures give. Governance structures are stabile and slow to change.

Issues of interest are among other;

* ownership of patient data
* role of government in adjusting governance structures
* e-governance
* networking patterns and options for health care
* different interpretations of the patient-health care provider relationship
* health care cluster definitions and analyses
* the interplay between business processes and governance structures in health care
* peer-to-peer computing applications in health care
* effects of governance structures on health care personnel
* e-communities and their dynamics in health care.

Reima Suomi (primary contact)
Professor of information systems science
Turku School of Economics and Business Administration
Rehtorinpellonkatu 3
Fin-20500 Turku
Finland
Tel. +358 2 338 3404
Mobile +358 40 556 3053
Fax + 358 2 338 3451
Reima.Suomi@tukkk.fi

Jarmo Tähkäpää
Turku School of Economics and Business Administration
Rehtorinpellonkatu 3
FIN-20520 Turku
Finland
Tel. +358 2 338 3431
Mobile +358 40 556 3053
Fax + 358 2 338 3451
jarmo.tahkapaa@tukkk.fi
 
 

Privacy & Security in Health Information Systems

This minitrack solicits papers from a wide spectrum of disciplines concerned with privacy and security in health information systems. Relevant research areas include, but are not limited to, the following:

Topics

• Privacy on health related web-sites and other Internet related initiatives
• Technological solutions to ensuring privacy and security of health data
• Privacy of health data used in research
• Legal and policy issues of regulating privacy of health data
• The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
• Analysis of the efficacy of proposed security solutions

Telemedicine

Telemedicine is about the use of information and biomedicine technologies to support, facilitate or improve health care services and activities among geographically distributed parties, including general practitioners, specialists, nurses and patients. Increasingly, telemedicine has become an feasible and potentially cost-effective mode for healthcare service delivery and collaboration. Continued research in this area is important but challenging, partially because of the complexity resulting from rapid technology advancements, service criticality, application diversity, and highly specialized and autonomous professional settings. In this vein, investigations of issues related to technology, organizational management, service economics, and many others are all critical to the ultimate success of telemedicine as a viable supplementary or alternative mode for service delivery and collaboration.

Topics: This minitrack invites research papers on the following topics:

• Design, evaluation and application of various telemedicine technologies and applications.
• Policy and legal issues concerning telemedicine-enabled services.
• Empirical examination of telemedicine program or technology implementation.
• Analytical modeling or empirical evaluation of cost-benefits or cost-effectiveness of telemedicine-based services.
• Outcome assessment studies of telemedicine-based patient care and services.
• Strategic aspects of telemedicine, including planning and market positioning.