bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Technology Leapfrogging for Developing Countries
Authors: Fong Michelle W.L.
Published: May 2011

Developing countries are generally latecomers to the ICT revolution, but if they can emulate industrialized countries in their adoption of ICTs, they will be afforded the same technological opportunities. Successful exploitation of such opportunities by developing countries can significantly narrow the economic gap between them and developed countries as they catch up in economic development. In ICT’s advancement trajectory, the opportunities offered by a newly emerged ICT tend to be superior to those of prior versions of technology. If a developing country leapfrogged to a newly emerged ICT, it would then be exposed to unprecedented potential in alleviating poverty and securing economic growth, as well as the possibility of surpassing developed and industrialized countries in economic development. Thus, technology leapfrogging is an attractive notion to developing countries, but is it a realistic goal?
Teens and Information and Communication Technologies
Authors: Bowler Leanne
Published: May 2011

The focus of this article is on how young people, ages 12–19, in the early 21st century use information and communications technologies. The wide and diverse nature of the landscape, composed of multiple platforms and applications in continuous change, necessitates a broad approach. Information technologies are now bundled with communications capabilities and vice versa, making a focus on one and not the other virtually impossible. Furthermore, one of the difficulties in studying ICT use among children and teenagers is that statistics and studies are still limited, even within digitally privileged countries. Ironically, while research in this area has focused on the educational use of ICT, young people overwhelmingly use it for personal reasons. This article, therefore, looks at ICT through a wide angle and offers a snapshot of the role of ICT in the lives of young people in the early days of the 21st century, suggesting in broad terms where the emerging issues and trends may lie.
Ubiquitous Computing and Communication for Product Monitoring
Authors: Michelini Rinaldo C. , Razzoli Roberto P.
Published: May 2011

The present discussion summarises the benefits provided with resort to IT instruments, by dealing with the delivery of extended artefacts, under the responsibility of extended enterprises. In view to establish the IT environment, one needs to address the market paradigm-shift, from earlier commodity- to mainly utility-based economics, having supply chains concerned by products-services, where the latter delivering often outruns the former. Outstripping the pertinent material flows, effectiveness quickly turns on the information flows, supported by networked organisations and cooperative set-ups, with mainly, a twofold outcome: (1) value added in totally new provisions, enhancing the supply effectiveness; (2) value added to the joined information and related transparency of overall environmental impact. Ambient intelligence is technology-driven opportunity based on the user friendly exploitation of ubiquitous computing and communication (Riva, Vatalaro, Davide, & Alcañiz, 2005; Stephanidis, 2001; VanLoenen, 2003). Turning ambient intelligence toward collaboration activities and eco-compatibility certifying duties could be the winning option to support enterprise competitiveness, privacy protection and eco-system safeguard through cooperative organisations. The involved IT aids basically will move from the existing World Wide Web capabilities, enhancing the extended enterprise, with the qualifying functions of service engineering, and fitting out the on-duty incumbents by users’ adaptive interfaces.
Using Audience Response Systems in the Classroom
Authors: Banks David A.
Published: May 2011

Audience response systems (ARS) are increasingly being introduced into educational settings, having previously proved their value in business. These systems make use of handheld numeric input devices to allow students to enter data in response to questions or statements displayed on a public screen. The captured data is displayed on a public screen and enables both academics and students to immediately see how the whole group has responded. The anonymity afforded by an ARS encourages individuals to fully participate without fear of ridicule or loss of face. The low cost ARS technology is simple to use by both students and academics, can be used with large (up to several thousands) or small groups and has applications in all topics of study and at all levels of study. ARS are highly portable, require little set-up time and are easy to use by anyone who has had some experience with software such as PowerPoint.
Video Content-Based Retrieval
Authors: Farag Waleed E.
Published: May 2011

Recently, multimedia applications have undergone explosive growth due to the monotonic increase in the available processing power and bandwidth. This incurs the generation of large amounts of media data that need to be effectively and efficiently organized and stored. While these applications generate and use vast amounts of multimedia data, the technologies for organizing and searching them are still immature. These data are usually stored in multimedia archives utilizing search engines to enable users to retrieve the required information. In this article, each of the above stages will be reviewed and expounded. Background, current research directions, and outstanding problems will also be discussed.
Virtual Communities of Practice for Health Care Professionals
Authors: Hanlis Elizabeth , Curley Jill , Abbass Paul
Published: May 2011

Wenger is typically credited with the development of the metaphor of communities of practice where “learning requires an atmosphere of openness and the key is to build an atmosphere of collective inquiry” (Wenger, 1998). However, the focus of creating a sense of belonging as well as the formulation of knowledge as a social process is not as new. Rather, it can be found in the form of a learning community. Senge (1990) introduced this concept of the learning organization to explain strategies to enhance the capacity of members to consistently collaborate on mutual goals.
Virtual Teams
Authors: Verburg Robert M.
Published: May 2011

Global market developments and the large-scale use of diverse applications in the area of information and communication technology have been key factors in the emergence of distributed teams. Such teams are often referred to as virtual teams. Virtual teams enable collaboration between people across traditional boundaries and offer tremendous opportunities for various achievements. Businesses are no longer tied to a single time zone and are, for example, able to develop software around the 24-hour clock. The Internet as the almost universal medium for interaction across boundaries has created an infrastructure that enables many organizations to launch virtual teams. Hardly any technical obstacle for communication and collaboration across geographic boundaries remain as these processes are supported by high tech collaboration solutions, such as groupware and other collaborative applications (e.g., videoconferencing, electronic blackboards). Virtual teams have a number of opportunities that are not found with colocated teams, such as involving rare expertise.
Web Accessibility and Compliance Issues
Authors: Becker Shirley Ann
Published: May 2011

The impetus for accessible electronic and information technology was driven by federal initiatives with the objective of “bridging the digital divide” (U. S. Department of Commerce, National Telecommunications and Information Administration, 2000). This initiative focused on improving quality and longevity of life, addressing social disparities, promoting small businesses, and providing educational opportunities, among others. As an outgrowth of this initiative, the concept of building an “information society for all” was promoted in the form of universal usability of all electronic and information technology. The long-term goal was to ensure that no one was left behind in terms of inaccessible electronic and information technology. In 1998, congress amended the Rehabilitation Act of 19731 with section 508 to require federal agencies to make electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities. Section 508 was enacted to eliminate barriers in electronic and information technology, make available new opportunities for people with disabilities, and encourage the development of technologies that will help achieve these goals (www.section508.gov). The law applies to all federal agencies when they develop, procure, maintain, or use electronic and information technology. Under section 508, agencies must give disabled federal government employees and citizens access to information that is comparable to the access available to others without disabilities.
Web Usage Mining
Authors: Westin Stu
Published: May 2011

Studies that rely on Web usage mining can be experimental or observational in nature. The focus of such studies is quite varied and may involve such topics as predicting online purchase intentions (Hooker & Finkelman, 2004; Moe, 2003; Montgomery, Li, Srinivsan, & Liechty, 2004), designing recommender systems for e-commerce products and sites (Cho & Kim, 2004; Kim & Cho, 2003), understanding navigation and search behavior (Chiang, Dholakia, & Westin, 2004; Gery & Haddad, 2003; Johnson, Moe, Fader, Bellman, & Lohse, 2004; Li & Zaiane, 2004), or a myriad of other subjects. Regardless of the issue being studied, data collection for Web usage mining studies often proves to be a vexing problem, and ideal research designs are frequently sacrificed in the interest of finding a reasonable data capture or collection mechanism. Despite the difficulties involved, the research community has recognized the value of Web-based experimental research (Saeed, Hwang, & Yi, 2003; Zinkhan, 2005), and has, in fact, called on investigators to exploit “non-intrusive means of collecting usage and exploration data” (Gao, 2003, p. 31) in future Web studies. In this article we discuss some of the methodological complexities that arise when conducting studies that involve Web usage mining. We then describe an innovative, software-based methodology that addresses many of these problems. The methods described here are most applicable to experimental studies, but they can be applied in ex-post observational research settings, as well.
Web-Based Personal Digital Library
Authors: Guan Sheng-Uei
Published: May 2011

As collections of relevant information either for public use or for personal use in a Web-based personal computer look like a digital library to its owner, this mechanism is called a Personal Digital Library (PDL). PDL will realise the selections of books, PDLs, and related persons through intellectual associations. As a server, PDL can store information simply and efficiently for easy retrieval and search, and provide intelligent supports for users (clients) to browse and find information. On the other hand, as a client, PDL can concurrently browse and automatically retrieve information from different PDLs (servers), and find a related person to communicate with during browsing. In addition, other PDLs can serve as memory extensions to overcome storage limitation in the local computer and avoid information duplication on the Web. PDL has potential uses in many areas such as personal use, education, commerce, finance, and entertainment. Personal users can employ any PDL with an Internet connection to manipulate their distributed information from anywhere around the world. This article introduces PDL design and prototyping. The prototype implemented shows that the PDL concept is feasible under existing technologies. Although PDL is designed to manage personal information collections in a network-based personal computer, it will be fruitful if the design or ideas presented in this article can stimulate further development in the Digital Library research.
Physician Characteristics Associated with Early Adoption of Electronic Medical Records in Smaller Group Practices
Authors: O’Neill Liam , Talbert Jeffery , Klepack William
Published: May 2011

To examine physician characteristics and practice patterns associated with the adoption of electronic medical records (EMRs) in smaller group practices. Primary care physicians in Kentucky were surveyed regarding their use of EMRs. Respondents were asked if their practice had fully implemented, partially implemented, or not implemented EMRs. Of the 482 physicians surveyed, the rate of EMR adoption was 28%, with 14% full implementation and 14% partial implementation. Younger physicians were significantly more likely to use EMRs (p = 0.00). For those in their thirties, 45% had fully or partially implemented EMRs compared with 15% of physicians aged 60 and above. In logistic regression analyses that controlled for practice characteristics, age, male gender, and rural location predicted EMR adoption. Younger physicians in smaller group practices are more likely to adopt EMRs than older physicians. EMRs were also associated with an increased use of chronic disease management.
Case Studies in Adaptive Information Access
Authors: Smyth Barry
Published: May 2011

Everyday hundreds of millions of users turn to the World-Wide Web as their primary source of information during their educational, business and personal lives. The Web is an essential source of businesscritical information but has also changed our personal lives, influencing the way that we learn, play, shop and socialise. During the course of a typical day an increasing number of us will interact with a variety of information services on the Web as we hunt for the information that we need. Very often these services will offer a number of alternative modes of information access and associated interfaces— navigation, search, and recommendation being the most common — each designed to help the user to efficiently fulfilling their current information needs. Navigation, search, and recommendation each have their own set of challenges when it comes to facilitating fast and efficient information access. In this chapter we will consider a number of these challenges and describe how they can be addressed by using techniques that allow information services to respond more intelligently to the needs and preferences of individuals and groups of users. Each challenge will be addressed in the form of a case-study focusing on one particular mode of information access (navigation, search, and recommendation) and an application scenario (mobile portals, Web search, and e-commerce), to describe how user profiling, personalization, and adaptive interface design can be combined to produce a more efficient and effective information service.
A Semantically Adaptive Interface for Measuring Portal Quality in E-Government
Authors: Magoutas Babis
Published: May 2011

This chapter introduces a semantically adaptive interface as a means of measuring the quality of egovernment portals, based on user feedback. The interface is semantic as it uses ontologies in order to formalize well defined semantics about the adaptation criteria used. Furthermore it is adaptive as three axes of adaptation are applied: based on real-time feedback from users, based on problems encountered by the user and based on metadata of the pages visited by the user. The authors hope that applying the proposed adaptive interface as a means of measuring e-government portals’ quality, will not only allow more focused and targeted assessment of quality, but will also increase users’ response rates.
Formalizing and Leveraging Domain Knowledge in the K4CARE Home Care Platform
Authors: Hajnal Ákos , Moreno Antonio , Pedone Gianfranco , Riaño David , Zsolt Varga László
Published: May 2011

This chapter proposes an agent-based architecture for home care support, whose main capability is to continuously admit and apply new medical knowledge entered into the system, capturing and codifying implicit knowledge deriving from the medical staff. Knowledge is the fundamental catalyst in all application domains, and this is particularly true especially for the medical context. Knowledge formalization, representation, exploitation, creation, and sharing are some of the most complex issues related to Knowledge Management. Moreover, Artificial Intelligence techniques and MAS (Multi-Agent System) in health care are increasingly justifying the large demand for their application, since traditional techniques are often not suitable to manage complex tasks or to adapt to unexpected events. The chapter presents also a methodology for approaching medical knowledge management from its representation symbolism to the implementation details. The codification of health care treatments, as well as the formalization of domain knowledge, serves as an explicit, a priori asset for the agent platform implementation. The system has the capability of applying new, implicit knowledge emerging from physicians.
A Social Ontology for Integrating Security and Software Engineering
Authors: Yu E. , Liu L. , Mylopoulos J.
Published: May 2011

As software becomes more and more entrenched in everyday life in today’s society, security looms large as an unsolved problem. Despite advances in security mechanisms and technologies, most software systems in the world remain precarious and vulnerable. There is now widespread recognition that security cannot be achieved by technology alone. All software systems are ultimately embedded in some human social environment. The effectiveness of the system depends very much on the forces in that environment. Yet there are few systematic techniques for treating the social context of security together with technical system design in an integral way. In this chapter, we argue that a social ontology at the core of a requirements engineering process can be the basis for integrating security into a requirements driven software engineering process. We describe the i* agent-oriented modelling framework and show how it can be used to model and reason about security concerns and responses. A smart card example is used to illustrate. Future directions for a social paradigm for security and software engineering are discussed.
Security Requirements Elicitation
Authors: Gupta Manish
Published: May 2011

Information security is becoming increasingly important and more complex as organizations are increasingly adopting electronic channels for managing and conducting business. However, state-of-the-art systems design methods have ignored several aspects of security that arise from human involvement or due to human factors. The chapter aims to highlight issues arising from coalescence of fields of systems requirements elicitation, information security, and human factors. The objective of the chapter is to investigate and suggest an agenda for state of human factors in information assurance requirements elicitation from perspectives of both organizations and researchers. Much research has been done in the area of requirements elicitation, both systems and security, but, invariably, human factors are not been taken into account during information assurance requirements elicitation. The chapter aims to find clues and insights into acquisition behavior of human factors in information assurance requirements elicitation and to illustrate current state of affairs in information assurance and requirements elicitation and why inclusion of human factors is required.
Do Information Security Policies Reduce the Incidence of Security Breaches
Authors: Doherty Neil F.
Published: May 2011

Information is a critical corporate asset that has become increasingly vulnerable to attacks from viruses, hackers, criminals, and human error. Consequently, organizations are having to prioritize the security of their computer systems in order to ensure that their information assets retain their accuracy, confidentiality, and availability. While the importance of the information security policy (InSPy) in ensuring the security of information is acknowledged widely, to date there has been little empirical analysis of its impact or effectiveness in this role. To help fill this gap, an exploratory study was initiated that sought to investigate the relationship between the uptake and application of information security policies and the accompanying levels of security breaches. To this end, a questionnaire was designed, validated, and then targeted at IT managers within large organizations in the UK. The findings presented in this chapter are somewhat surprising, as they show no statistically significant relationships between the adoption of information security policies and the incidence or severity of security breaches. The chapter concludes by exploring the possible interpretations of this unexpected finding and its implications for the practice of information security management.
Mobile Marketing
Authors: Takeyasu Kazuhiro
Published: May 2011

Recently, cellular phones capable of accessing the Internet are prevailing rapidly in Japan. First, their functions and features are examined: Classification of services offered at i-mode; Characteristics of cyberspace communication tools and their comparisons with mobile instrument; Strengths and weaknesses of mobile phones. Then, mobile marketing is discussed on from the following perspectives. (1)Ability to use real-time marketing, (2) Ability to use online coupon marketing, (3) Ability to navigate customer easily to shop, (4) Ability to make purchase procedures seamless—from the notification of special offers (by retailers) to the payment (by customers), (5) Retrieval and utilization of information without time and spatial restriction. Third, we analyze the differences in meaning between so-called four Ps in real commerce marketing and those in cyberspace marketing. Finally, several cases using cellular phones are analyzed: coupon marketing, production/construction status control, and distribution control.
The Retaliatory Feedback Problem
Authors: Malaga Ross A.
Published: May 2011

Online auctions are an increasingly popular avenue for completing electronic transactions. Many online auction sites use some type of reputation (feedback) system—where parties to a transaction can rate each other. However, retaliatory feedback threatens to undermine these systems. Retaliatory feedback occurs when one party in a transaction believes that the other party will leave them a negative feedback if they do the same. This chapter examines data gathered from E-Bay in order to show that retaliatory feedback exists and to categorize the problem. A simple solution to the retaliatory feedback problem—feedback escrow—is described.
Novel Results on MBMS Service Provisioning in UMTS/WLAN Heterogeneous Architectures
Authors: Bokor László
Published: May 2011

The support of broadcasting and multicasting as an efficient L3-based service poses rigorous requirements to the next generation mobile communication architectures. When IP multicasting has been seriously considered in mobile systems, soon has emerged the proposal of Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (MBMS) for 3G networks and beyond. However, with the spreading of versatile heterogeneous wireless systems, like the cooperation of European 3G (UMTS) and Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), the problem of wireless IP datacasting arises in more complicated ways. In order to extend MBMS for UMTS/WLAN heterogeneous architectures we approach a novel framework along with a suitable and efficient WLAN MAC (Media Access Control) extension. In this work we also evaluate the performance of our proposal using a discrete event simulation environment called OMNeT++.
Movement Prediction Oriented Adaptive Location Management
Authors: Das Tania
Published: May 2011

Movement prediction oriented adaptive location management provides a major role in personal communication service (PCS) system. Generally the GSM system supports two level architecture. Because it supports two kinds of databases-Home Location register and Visitor Location Register. Every time when the user crosses the location area it has to register with the HLR. This creates high cost for registration and location tracking as it involves the use of costly bandwidth between the Mobile Switching Center (MSC) and the HLR. In this paper the technique for reducing the costs during the location tracking and location update is proposed. Taking the movement prediction of the users it creates the block and the user registers with the HLR only after crossing the block instead of crossing the single cell. This movement prediction is generated using one neural network model for all the users. The block register (BR) is introduced between the block and the HLR in two level systems, thus introduces three level architecture. In this architecture some signaling cost values between the MSC-BR, BR-HLR and BR-BR are maintained to get the better performance. In this proposed system the aim is to set the value between the MSC and BR and the two BR as small as possible and the value between the BR and the HLR must be higher to get the better performance.
Geographic Information Systems in Health Care Services
Authors: Hilton Brian N.
Published: May 2011

Geographic information systems (GIS) have numerous applications in human health. This chapter opens with a brief discussion of the three dimensions of decision-making in organizations — operational control, management control, and strategic planning. These dimensions are then discussed in terms of three case studies: a practice- improvement case study under operational control, a service-planning case study under management control, and a research case study under strategic planning. The discussion proceeds with an analysis of GIS contributions to three health care applications: medical/disability services (operational control/practice), emergency response (management control/planning), and infectious disease/SARS (strategic planning/research). The chapter concludes with a cross-case synthesis and discussion of how GIS could be integrated into health care management through Spatial Decision Support Systems and presents three keys issues to consider regarding the management of organizations: Data Integration for Operational Control, Planning Interorganizational Systems for Management Control, and Design Research for Strategic Planning.
An Overview of Efforts to Bring Clinical Knowledge to the Point of Care
Authors: Sittig Dean F.
Published: May 2011

By bringing people the right information in the right format at the right time and place, state of the art clinical information systems with imbedded clinical knowledge can help people make the right clinical decisions. This chapter provides an overview of the efforts to develop systems capable of delivering such information at the point of care. The first section focuses on “library-type” applications that enable a clinician to look-up information in an electronic document. The second section describes a myriad of “realtime clinical decision support systems.” These systems generally deliver clinical guidance at the point of care within the clinical information system (CIS). The third section describes several “hybrid” systems, which combine aspects of real-time clinical decision support systems with library-type information. Finally, section four provides a brief look at various attempts to bring clinical knowledge, in the form of computable guidelines, to the point of care.
Web Service Design Concepts and Structures for Support of Highly Interconnected E-Health Infrastructures
Authors: Koumpis Adamantios
Published: May 2011

In this chapter we present organizational aspects that appear when considering the case of interconnecting and integrating different compartments of a modern hospital. While the information and communication technologies provide advanced and powerful means for the creation of coherent information supply services, such as the Web service and ontology technologies, there is a lack of appropriate organizational metaphors that will enable the successful assimilation of these technologies, helping to aid in the improvement of critical cost parameters that concentrate a large part of the hospital’s management resources, while also helping to improve the knowledge capital and the intangible and immaterial assets of any particular hospital, which are considered as the most essential and scarce resource. In this paper we presents a technology-based approach for solving interoperability problems at the service level, and we deliberately adopt a problem-solving approach that has successfully been adopted by the European IST Project ARTEMIS.
Information Retrieval by Semantic Similarity
Authors: Hliaoutakis Angelos , Varelas Giannis , Voutsakis Epimenidis , Petrakis Euripides G.M. , Milios Evangelos
Published: May 2011

Semantic Similarity relates to computing the similarity between conceptually similar but not necessarily lexically similar terms. Typically, semantic similarity is computed by mapping terms to an ontology and by examining their relationships in that ontology. We investigate approaches to computing the semantic similarity between natural language terms (using WordNet as the underlying reference ontology) and between medical terms (using the MeSH ontology of medical and biomedical terms). The most popular semantic similarity methods are implemented and evaluated using WordNet and MeSH. Building upon semantic similarity, we propose the Semantic Similarity based Retrieval Model (SSRM), a novel information retrieval method capable for discovering similarities between documents containing conceptually similar terms. The most effective semantic similarity method is implemented into SSRM. SSRM has been applied in retrieval on OHSUMED (a standard TREC collection available on the Web). The experimental results demonstrated promising performance improvements over classic information retrieval methods utilizing plain lexical matching (e.g., Vector Space Model) and also over state-of-theart semantic similarity retrieval methods utilizing ontologies.
A Distributed Patient Identification Protocol Based on Control Numbers with Semantic Annotation
Authors: Eichelberg Marco
Published: May 2011

One important problem of information systems in health care is the localisation and access to electronic patient records across health care institute boundaries, especially in an international setting. The complexity of the problem is increased by the absence of a globally accepted standard for electronic health care records, the absence of unique patient identifiers in most countries, and the strict data protection requirements that apply to clinical documents. This article describes a protocol that allows the identification of locations of patient records for a given patient and provides access to these records, if granted, under consideration of the legal and technical requirements. The protocol combines cryptographic techniques with semantic annotation and mediation and presents a simple Web-service-based access to clinical documents.
Technology in Physician Education
Authors: LaBrunda Michelle
Published: May 2011

How physicians are trained has been heavily influenced by the advent of the technology era. Technology has progressed faster than society has been able to integrate it. The same is true within schools of medicine and residency training programs. Many technological advances are available to medical educators, and the goal is to make educators aware of the possible educational tools. Traditionally, medicine has been a learn-by-doing discipline. This is becoming less and less acceptable in modern society, and new training methods are being sought, developed and implemented. Some of the modalities available to medical educators include intranet, hand-helds, virtual reality, computerized charting, computerized access to information and electronic monitoring student education. Technological advances in medical education have their uses, but there are also many drawbacks, including hardware limitations, computer failure, security issues, patient confidentiality issues, property rights, maintenance and poor attitude of those required to implement new learning systems.
The Impact of Information Technology in Healthcare Privacy
Authors: Yin Ling Fung Maria
Published: May 2011

The increased use of the Internet and latest information technologies such as wireless computing is revolutionizing the healthcare industry by improving services and reducing costs. The advances in technology help to empower individuals to understand and take charge of their healthcare needs. Patients can participate in healthcare processes, such as diagnosis and treatment, through secure electronic communication services. Patients can search healthcare information over the Internet and interact with physicians. The same advances in technology have also heightened privacy awareness. Privacy concerns include healthcare Web sites that do not practice the privacy policies they preach, computer break-ins, insider and hacker attacks, temporary and careless employees, virus attacks, human errors, system design faults, and social engineering. This chapter looks at medical privacy issues and how they are handled in the U.S. and New Zealand. A sample of 20 New Zealand health Web sites was investigated.
Teaching Medical Statistics Over the Internet
Authors: Knight Rachael , Whittington Kate , Ford W. Chris L. , Jenkins Julian M.
Published: May 2011

The potential for computers to assist learning has been recognised for many years (Jenkins, 1997), with reproductive medicine benefiting greatly from Internet technology (Jenkins, 1999). Following a detailed survey of information technology facilities and skills for postgraduate education (Draycott, 1999), a pilot Internet training programme in reproductive medicine demonstrated effective methods to deliver online teaching (Jenkins, 2001). Based on this experience, in 2001 the Obstetrics and Gynaecology in the University of Bristol, U.K. launched a postgraduate masters course in human reproduction and development, delivered principally over the Internet (Jenkins, 2002). This course has been under continuous evaluation and development since its launch, refining the application of learning technology to most appropriately meet students’ needs (Cahill, 2003). A particularly challenging module of the course considers research methods and statistics. This module was independently evaluated from both a student and tutor perspective, with the objective of identifying learning priorities and optimal educational methodology. This article presents strengths and weaknesses of delivering statistics education online, considering how best to develop this in the future.
Intelligent Portals for Supporting Medical Information Needs
Authors: Moon Jane
Published: May 2011

The aim of this chapter is to review the way portal technology can assist users seeking medical information. There has been an increase in health Internet usage, and better health-care delivery outcomes are predicted as users are better informed when making medical decisions. At the same time, there is much concern about the need for medical portals to meet community information needs. This chapter discusses what constitutes an intelligent portal, discusses desirable portal components and attributes of intelligent portal features, and how these can be implemented to meet the needs of diverse users. Seven Australian medical Web sites have been analysed according to intelligence features. The results and analysis are presented and discussed, in particular, with respect to their functionality as defined for intelligent portals. The discussion is focused on the extent to which these attributes help users with their information seeking and therefore support their decision-making processes.
Digital Divide and E-Health Implications for E-Collaboration Research
Authors: Masucci Michele
Published: May 2011

E-health has rapidly gained attention as a framework for understanding the relationship between using information and communication technologies (ICTs) to promote individual and community health, and using ICTs for improving the management of health care delivery systems. The use of e-collaborative tools is implicit to the delivery and access of e-health. Development of the capacity to transmit and receive digital diagnostic images, use video telecommunications for supporting the remote delivery of specialized care and surgical procedures, and the use of e-communication technologies to support logistical elements of medical care (such as scheduling appointments, filling prescriptions, and responding to patient questions) are just a few ways in which e-communications are transforming how medical care is embedded within institutional, organizational, family, and community settings. The emerging field of e-collaboration focuses attention on the need for society to critically examine how electronic communication technologies facilitate, shape, and transform the ways in which organizations, groups, and communities interact. There are many works that explain how to (a) develop e-health systems, (b) assess the use of such systems, and (c) analyze the health outcomes that can be achieved with effective e-health applications (Brodie et al., 2000; Eder, 2000; Spil & Schuring, 2006). Less attention has been paid to how advances in e-collaboration research might inform e-health applications development and scholarly discourse. Because of this gap in the literature, few discussions pertain to understanding patient perspectives about the advantages and disadvantages that may result from rapidly emerging interconnections among access to health care, health information, health support systems, and ICTs (Berland et al., 2001; Hesse et al., 2005; Gibbons, 2005; Gilbert & Masucci, 2006).
Inter-Organizational E-Commerce in Healthcare Services
Authors: Kalyanpur Arjun , Latif Firoz , Saini Sanjay , Sarnikar Surendra
Published: May 2011

Advances in healthcare information technology have enabled new models for electronic delivery of healthcare services. In this article, we present the case of electronic delivery of radiological services and describe the market-based and technological factors that have led to the development of Internet- based service models for flexible delivery of radiological services. Specifically, we describe the technical, regulatory, and security issues that affect teleradiology and propose a service delivery model for providing cost-effective and flexible radiological services.
A Metric for Healthcare Technology Management (HCTM)
Authors: Eisler George , Tan Joseph , Sheps Samuel
Published: May 2011

Among key drivers of healthcare reform in Canadian society are the challenges faced by the rapid rate of technological change and its impact on organizational performance in terms of efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and innovation in business and operational processes. However, despite the noted significance of the impact of technological change on healthcare organizations, the challenge of healthcare technology management (HCTM) has received only scattered and marginal attention in the technology management (TM) literature. The lack of formalization in HCTM construct, attributes, and measures motivated an empirical study to develop a metric for HCTM. This metric was then used to assess HCTM practices in teaching hospitals across Canada. The project began with an analysis of developments to date in the fields of Management of Technology and Management of Medical Technology. An extensive literature content analysis generated a set of definitions and attributes of the conceptual TM construct, which was eventually extended to HCTM. A measuring instrument was developed through a formal design process involving expert panel review, pilot testing, instrument refinement, and field-testing to extract and measure HCTM performance indicators. Administration of this metric with the help of the Association of Canadian Academic Health Organizations via a Web-based survey of senior healthcare administrators provided insights into the HCTM status of Canadian teaching hospitals and its relationship with organizational performance.
Applying Strategies to Overcome User Resistance in a Group of Clinical Managers to a Business Software Application
Authors: Adams Barbara , Berner Eta S. , Rousse Wyatt Joni
Published: May 2011

User resistance is a common occurrence when new information systems are implemented within health care organizations. Individuals responsible for overseeing implementation of these systems in the health care environment may encounter more resistance than trainers in other environments. It is important to be aware of methods to reduce resistance in end users. Proper training of end users is an important strategy for minimizing resistance. This article reviews the literature on the reasons for user resistance to health care information systems and the implications of this literature for designing training programs. The other principles for reducing resistance (communication, user involvement, strategic use of consultants) are illustrated with a case study involving training clinical managers on business applications. Individuals responsible for health care information system implementations should recognize that end user resistance can lead to system failure and should employ these best practices when embarking on new implementations.
Medical Ethical and Policy Issues Arising from RIA
Authors: Joseph Jimmie L. , Cook David P.
Published: May 2011

New technologies can lead to social upheaval and ethical dilemmas which are unrecognized at the time of their introduction. Medical care technology has advanced rapidly over the course of the past two decades and has frequently been accompanied by unforeseen consequences for individuals, the medical profession and government budgets, with concomitant implications for society and public policy (Magner, 1992; Marti- Ibanez, 1962). Advances in information technology (IT) during the last decade and a half are now impacting the medical profession, and the delivery of medical advances, in ways that will impact public policy debates for the foreseeable future. The World Wide Web (Web) makes information that was once the eminent domain of medical professionals available to average citizens who are increasingly demanding medical treatments from the leading edge of medical technology. For example, CenterWatch (www.centerwatch. com) provides a wealth of information concerning clinical trials and offers a conduit by which patients can become involved in such studies. The availability of such information has also led to patients suffering from life-threatening diseases not part of such clinical trials to request special access to potentially life-saving therapies. As a result, the Web is increasing the complexity of answering public policy questions surrounding what medical technologies to make available to the public, who will be eligible to receive new medical treatments, and at what cost.
Biomedical Data Mining Using RBF Neural Networks
Authors: Chu Feng
Published: May 2011

Accurate diagnosis of cancers is of great importance for doctors to choose a proper treatment. Furthermore, it also plays a key role in the searching for the pathology of cancers and drug discovery. Recently, this problem attracts great attention in the context of microarray technology. Here, we apply radial basis function (RBF) neural networks to this pattern recognition problem. Our experimental results in some well-known microarray data sets indicate that our method can obtain very high accuracy with a small number of genes.
Mobile Communications and Mobile Commerce
Authors: Dholakia Nikhilesh , Rask Morten , Dholakia Ruby Roy
Published: May 2011

In this keynote chapter, we provide an overview of the emerging global landscape of mobile communications and mobile commerce, circa 2005. We introduce the four core CLIP functionalities— communications (C), locatability (L), information (I), exchange and payment (P) facilitation—on which mobile commerce systems and services are based. We then explore the various requirements for creating successful mobile commerce portals, or m-portals, using the CLIP functionalities as well as ways for personalization, permission and specification of service formats and content.
Mobile Learning
Authors: Yuen Steve Chi-Yin , Yuen Patrivan K.
Published: May 2011

The mobile revolution is finally here. The evidence of mobile penetration and adoption is irrefutable: smartphones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), portable game devices, portable media players, MP3 and MP4 players, tablet PCs, and laptops abound and can be found everywhere. Also, the increasing availability of high-bandwidth network infrastructures and advances in wireless technologies have opened up new accessibility opportunities (Kinshuk, 2003). No demographic is immune from this phenomenon. People from all walks of life and in all age groups are increasingly connected and communicate electronically with each other nearly everywhere they go (Wagner, 2005). The development of and adoption rate of mobile technologies are advancing rapidly on a global scale (Brown, 2005). Since 2000, there is considerable interest from educators and technical developers in exploiting the universal appeal and unique capabilities of mobile technologies for the use in education and training settings (Naismith, Lonsdale, Vavoula, & Sharples, 2004). The use of mobile technologies to support, enhance, and improve access to learning is a relatively new idea and many learners are quite comfortable with various mobile devices. Mlearning (mobile learning) is consequently an emerging concept as educators are beginning to explore more with mobile technologies in teaching and learning environments. Already, there are numerous applications for mobile technologies in education—from the ability to transmit learning modules and administrative data wirelessly, to enabling learners to communicate with instructors and peers “on-the-go” (Brown, 2005).
Environments for Mobile Learning
Authors: Chao Han-Chieh , Wu Tin-Yu , Kao Michelle T.C.
Published: May 2011

As we enter the electronic age, technologies enabling e-learning have increased flexibility of learning location. Wireless communication technologies further increase the options for learning location (Johnson & Maltz, 1996; Wu, Huang & Chao, 2004). Advances in wireless communication technologies have recently provided the opportunity for educators to create new educational models. With the aid of wireless communication technology, educational practice can be embedded into mobile life without wired-based communication. With the trend of the educational media becoming more mobilized, portable and individualized, the learning form is being modified spectacularly. The mobile learning environment possesses many unique characteristics (Chen, Kao & Sheu, 2003).
Evaluating Mobile Human-Computer Interaction
Authors: Baber Chris
Published: May 2011

In this chapter the evaluation of human computer interaction (HCI) with mobile technologies is considered. The ISO 9241 notion of ‘context of use’ helps to define evaluation in terms of the ‘fitnessfor- purpose’ of a given device to perform given tasks by given users in given environments. It is suggested that conventional notions of usability can be useful for considering some aspects of the design of displays and interaction devices, but that additional approaches are needed to fully understand the use of mobile technologies. These additional approaches involve dual-task studies in which the device is used whilst performing some other activity, and subjective evaluation on the impact of the technology on the person.