Details

Track Chairs:

Richard Klein, Florida International University,  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Surendra Sarnikar, Dakota State University,  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Track Description:

Information systems (IS) and technology (IT) innovations offer significant potential to improve quality and efficiency of care delivery, enable new forms of healthcare organizations, enhance interactions between patients and healthcare providers, and transform care delivery. However, to fully exploit the power of IS/IT within the healthcare sector requires overcoming significant challenges. Consistent with the 2014 conference theme, Smart Sustainability, the Information Systems Opportunity, the focuses on opportunities for optimizing the design, implementation, adoption, and use of healthcare IS and IT. Subsequently, efforts might demonstrate and quantify impacts on clinical efficiency as well as efficient communication and coordination among patient, providers, and hospitals/healthcare facilities. We welcome IS and IT studies from a variety of reference perspectives including computer science, economics, organizational behavior, public policy, software engineering, and strategy.

Mini-Tracks:


Role of Technology in Improving Healthcare Delivery Processes

James (Jim) Ryan, Troy University, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Yajiong Xue
Linda Byrd

Healthcare organizations have been redesigning processes and implementing various forms of information technology (IT) to increase productivity, lower costs, and improve the quality of care. Unfortunately, the expected significant improvements in the quality of care and reductions in costs after large health IT investments are often not achieved. Recognizing that significant improvements require more than just deploying IT, this mini-track seeks papers that investigate the role of IT in improving healthcare delivery processes and the opportunities and challenges in IT-enabled change in healthcare organizations. The mini-track is open to papers on the challenges of achieving benefits from information systems and technologies in healthcare delivery, and how those benefits might best be achieved in and across a variety of healthcare settings (e.g., hospitals, ambulatory clinics, in the home). It is also open to a variety of research methods including qualitative, quantitative, and design science approaches. We are especially interested in interdisciplinary approaches, combining for example IT, process design, and managerial and policy initiatives. Because the national context affects health care delivery choices, we are also interested in multi-national studies.


Healthcare Analytics

C. Derrick Huang, Florida Atlantic University, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Ravi Behara
Jahyun Goo

With the accumulation of data in the vast deployment of HIT, it is expected that Big Data can help healthcare providers and policy makers navigate this treacherous territory. Further, in the U.S., the next stage of EHR implementation will shift towards the effective use of data, under the framework of Meaningful Use (Stage 2 and 3). Analytics can provide the basis on which better decisions can be made to move towards a healthcare system that addresses the combined objectives of lower costs, safe care, effective clinical outcomes, and high patient satisfaction. The need to build analytics competencies among practitioners and researchers is apparent. Given the importance and the challenges of Healthcare Analytics, this mini-track provides a platform for researchers and practitioners to submit original studies on the topic.


Successful and Sustainable Mobile and Electronic Health (mHealth/eHealth) Solutions

Sweta Sneha, Kennesaw State University, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Ton Spil
Nilmini Wickramasinghe

The objective of this mini-track is to address global healthcare challenges with rising healthcare costs, graying of the globe, and limited resources by soliciting work-in-progress and completed research papers covering technical, organizational, behavioral, economical, and managerial perspectives on mHealth/eHealth that: (1) assess the infrastructure issues towards supporting mHealth/ eHealth; (2) propose and/or evaluate the design, development, and implementation of successful mHealth/ehealth applications; (3) assess the impact of mHealth/eHealth applications on patients, doctors, healthcare organization, and society in general; (4) develop theories to better understand the phenomenon of mHealth and eHealth; and (5) examine mobile applications and sustainability challenges across a specific population segment and/or disease; (6) assess the impact of underlying regulatory, security, and policy issues impacting the mHealth/eHealth domain; and (7) innovation in healthcare practice and delivery utilizing mobile devices. Successful papers maybe fast tracked for a special issue in Health and Technology and /or International Journal Networking and Virtual Organizations.


Security Issues in Health Information Technology

Barbara Hewitt, Texas A&M University
Constance Mussa

Electronic healthcare information systems are essential to the improvement and quality of healthcare service and patients’ health. However, the current accelerated adoption of web based health information systems means that many clinicians and non-clinicians, as well as systems that span multiple organizations have access to an individual’s medical record. This widespread access to the electronic medical record (EMR) and other health information systems, significantly increases the security threats to an organization’s sensitive information, including personally identifiable health information (PHI).. Security threats to electronic health information systems originate from problems related to hardware, software, and/or humans.. Healthcare organizations must develop innovative methods and policies to share, protect, and ensure the integrity, confidentiality and availability of healthcare information. Authors are invited to submit original manuscripts to the Security Issues in Health Information Technology mini track of the 20th Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS 2014). These manuscripts should provide innovative, original research that offer contributions in any area related to security issues in health information technology. Submitted papers must not have been previously published nor submitted simultaneously for publication to any other conference, workshop or journal.


Electronic Medical/Health Records (EMRs/EHRs) in Healthcare Practices

C. Ranganathan, Bentley University
Balaji Sankaranarayanan, Bentley University, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it." target="_blank">
Gary David

Electronic Medical/Health Records (EMRs/EHRs) are a critical component of the American health-care system. Healthcare practices face distinct challenges including organizational challenges, resource constraints, and technological bottlenecks. Therefore, there is a growing need to understand the EMR/EHR issues in healthcare practices. The focus of this mini-track is on research on EMRs/EHRs in healthcare practices of various types such as large, ambulatory and smaller practices, that furthers our understanding of (1) systems, processes and strategies for implementing EMR/EHR (2) Electronic exchange of healthcare information among different stakeholders, (3) Integration of mobile devices and medical devices with healthcare systems 3) security and privacy issue associated with EMR/EHR in healthcare organizations. The mini-track is open to both completed and in-progress research, including broad survey articles, case studies, conceptual papers, descriptive reports, focused research issues or problems analyzed using a variety of tools and empirical methodologies.


Pharmaceutical Enterprise Systems and Supply Chain Management Systems

Ahmad Alibabaee, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Pharmaceutical industry processes have some specific characteristics, and Pharmaceutical supply chain is more complex rather than many of industries. Product characterization, regulatory requirements, cost considerations, quality assurance and compliance, different margin of patent products and generics and special storage condition of biopharmaceuticals are some of issues that influence organizational processes in pharmaceutical filed. In addition of mentioned items, some other issues such as new delivery methods including direct to patient (DTP) for some special drug affect managing the supply chain. Using Information Systems can have a significant role in handling these issues by managing and integrating data and information among the organization and its value chain. Therefore, designing and implementation of enterprise systems and supply chain management systems are very important in this era.
Possible topics:

  • Advanced application in improvement of pharmaceutical processes
  • Expert systems and DSS applications in Pharmaceutical industry
  • Handling direct to patient by using information system applications
  • Pharmaceutical information system implementation success and failure
  • Regulatory concerns in implementation of Pharmaceutical information systems
  • Pharmaceutical information systems integration
  • Data & Information integration in pharmaceutical supply chain
  • Pharmaceutical supply chain efficiency and effectiveness
  • Pharmaceutical supply chain evaluation factors
  • Using big data in pharmaceutical R&D
  • Pattern recognition and classification of patient behaviors
  • Using process mining in pharmaceutical industry

 
Information Technology for Global Health

Joseph Tan
James (Jim) Ryan, Troy University, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Michael Dohan

As global interconnectedness increases, the impact of health problems are not efficiently addressed from a purely national standpoint. Therefore, a concerted effort among governments, multidisciplinary efforts, and other institutions, in efforts that span national boundaries, is the new emerging approach to deal with these issues. This approach, known as global health, entails using this multidimensional approach to address transnational health issues, specifically including HIV/AIDS, rural healthcare service delivery, and other health issues affecting the world population.

This minitrack will explore emerging trends for applying innovative health IT solutions to improve general population and community healthcare across the globe, including low-cost, mobile and other emerging health technological applications. These solutions will provide a multinational perspective on the benefits of mobile health and other emerging information technologies and describes different examples and applications implemented. This minitrack will consider empirical research, reviews of current literature, theory, methodology, as well as relevant position papers.


Smart and Connected Health for Wellbeing: Consumer-Centric Healthcare Systems

Bernard Han, Western Michigan University, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Benjamin Schooley
Wu-Chyuan Gau

This mini-track is entitled “Smart and Connected Health for Wellbeing” with an emphasis on the consumer centric and learning health information systems that empower patients to manage their health better and maintain a healthier lifestyle. Smart Health Information Systems enable consumers to take control of their own health and wellbeing. Examples of such systems include several non-clinical technologies such as web-based interfaces, mobile applications, social health technologies, and medical devices such as accelerometers and sensors. In addition, a number of clinical consumer centric technologies support better health management. Online health information portals, tele-health solutions, personal health records (PHR) and persuasive technologies provide consumers opportunities to manage their own care better and be active participants in their care teams. It is important to study the design requirements that are essential for usable consumer-centric health information systems and successful implementations. Through studying user expectations and attitudes towards these systems, we can better guide implementations and policy decisions.