Debbie Keeling

Social care informatics as an essential part of holistic health care: A call for action

PURPOSE The authors identified the need for a cross-disciplinary research view of issues to ensure an integrated citizen-centric support to achieve optimal health of individual citizens and, in particular, the role of informatics to inform and coordinate support towards integrated and holistic care. METHOD An Exploratory Workshop was approved and sponsored by the European Science Foundation. Twenty-three participants from 15 countries attended, covering a full range of health, social care and informatics professions and disciplines. RESULTS The participants found strong common ground in identifying key issues to be addressed if citizens with compromised health are to receive integrated and coordinated support to a common set of objectives, while also ensuring appropriate choice and support for citizen, family and other informal carers. At the same time, optimal health was identified as a fundamental human right, and that achieving this is a necessary priority of a caring society. Moreover, Europe has a commitment to researching and developing health informatics (e-health), though not yet giving a priority to this integration of health and social care. Specifically the following main informatics challenges to be addressed were identified: (1) to identify available information and communication needs related to different scenarios of use in the intersection between health and social care, (2) to develop and map shared ontologies, and standards for integration and/or brokerage, (3) to enable planned information access and sharing, shaping a system of trust where the patient is an active partner and policies are established considering all partners/interests, (4) to investigate the use of automatic/intelligent knowledge based and context-relevant services, and (5) empowering the citizen (or their selected agent) as co-producer through modern informatics tools, while carefully avoiding selective disempowerment of the most vulnerable. CONCLUSION The Exploratory Workshop resulted in a unanimous Declaration for action, which is presented appended to this paper.

Co-evolving E-tail and On-Line Communities: Conceptual Framework

This paper explores the problem of designing a Web site that meets the needs of both an evolving community and an evolving business. It reports a case study of a business that introduced an e-tail site and an associated on-line community. The site development used an existing community-centered development method. The study found that participants had different motivations for visiting the site—some only wanted product information and purchase, some were seeking social support and information, others sought a more intense experience and greater social involvement. Failure to recognize the separate needs of these clusters resulted in not fully achieving business- and community- building goals. The analysis of the relationship between Web site design, cluster needs, and business goals offers a conceptual framework for co-evolving community and business.

Virtual communities come of age: Parallel service, value, and propositions offered in communal online space

Abstract The Internet has opened up new virtual communal spaces for consumers to congregate and address issues of mutual interest. Such virtual communities of interest offer consumers the opportunity to exchange experiential and technical information relating to their shared field of interest. Of the sectors in which virtual communities of interest have emerged, health care has witnessed a proliferation of condition-related communities. Providing health care consumers with the opportunity to share experience and expertise, these communities provide a range of new value propositions offering health care consumers opportunities to undertake self-service activities independent of health care professionals. Utilising the concept of the service encounter as a framework, this paper explores patterns of consumer participation in and utilisation of virtual communities in supporting service consumption. It examines the way in which these permissible spaces act as a virtual parallel service influencing consumer practice in the formal service encounter. For health care consumers and professionals, the utilisation of such space has significant implications for the shape of the service encounter in the information society.

Internet forums and negotiation of healthcare knowledge cultures

Purpose – Internet forums are an important arena for information exchange between consumers. Despite healthcare being one of the most accessed information categories on the internet, knowledge of exchange between patients in online communities remains limited. Specifically, little is known about how patients negotiate knowledge in online forums to understand and manage their diseases. This paper aims to illustrate this by presenting data that demonstrate the construction of tacit knowledge within online health communities, and how consumers exercise their “voice” within complex professional services. Design/methodology/approach – This paper reports an exploratory single case study of an online discussion forum for breast cancer sufferers, in which participants discuss their experience with healthcare services and related pharmaceutical products. Textual data were collected and analysed from the forum retrospectively from an 11-month period, entailing contributions from 252 participants. Findings – The pap...

Consumer perceptions of Interactive Service Robots: A Value-Dominant Logic perspective

We propose a “Value-Dominant Logic” approach to complement HRI research by integrating two well-known user-centric methodologies from the field of marketing. From the results of laddering interviews accompanied by a visual projective technique we show that consumer value perceptions of robots in a retail service environment are of a paradoxical nature where behavioral and social norms are expected of the robot, yet not for the user. Our consumer oriented value-based approach can contribute to the field of HRI by providing a complementary means of user-centered design/ methodology/requirements gathering and additional multidisciplinary collaborations.

Evolving roles and structures of triadic engagement in healthcare

Purpose This study focuses on the changing nature of healthcare service encounters by studying the phenomenon of triadic engagement incorporating interactions between patients, local and virtual networks and healthcare professionals. Design/methodology/approach An 18-month longitudinal ethnographic study documents interactions in naturally occurring healthcare consultations. Professionals (n=13) and patients (n=24) within primary and secondary care units were recruited. Analysis of observations, field notes and interviews provides an integrated picture of triadic engagement. Findings Triadic engagement is conceptualised against a two-level framework. (1) The structure of triadic consultations is identified in terms of the human voice, virtual voice and networked voice. These are related to: companions’ contributions to discussions and the virtual network impact. (2) Evolving roles are mapped to three phases of transformation: enhancement; empowerment; emancipation. Triadic engagement varied across conditions. Research limitations/implications These changing roles and structures evidence an increasing emphasis on the responsible consumer and patients/companions to utilise information/support in making health-related decisions. The nature and role of third voices requires clear delineation. Practical implications Structures of consultations should be rethought around the diversity of patient/companion behaviours and expectations as patients undertake self-service activities. Implications for policy and practice are: the parallel set of local/virtual informational and service activities; a network orientation to healthcare; tailoring of support resources/guides for professionals and third parties to inform support practices. Originality/value Contributions are made to understanding triadic engagement and forwarding the agenda on patient-centred care. Longitudinal illumination of consultations is offered through an exceptional level of access to observe consultations.

“Redressing the Sleeper Effect: Evidence for the Favorable Persuasive Impact of Discounting Information Over Time in a Contemporary Advertising Context,”

The shift in the accessibility of positive and negative information about consumer products on the Internet calls for a revisiting of persuasion effects. A counterintuitive effect, called the sleeper effect, predicts that attitudes toward a persuasive message have the potential to increase in favorableness despite the presence of information discounting the message. An experimental study was conducted to support the existence of the sleeper effect, demonstrate its renewed relevance in the contemporary advertising environment, and provide a foundation for further sleeper effect studies.

Healthcare Self-Management Tools: Promotion or Prevention Regulatory Focus? A Scale (PR-PV) Development and Validation

Health self-management tools, believed to provide effective and cost-efficient healthcare, are often rejected by consumers. Regulatory focus theory (Higgins 2014) could facilitate adoption patterns of such tools by positioning adoption as matching/mismatching individual motivational concern: promotion/prevention focus. This research proposes that people perceive products as inherently promotion or prevention oriented, and matching person orientation to product orientation enhances tool uptake. The paper outlines the development of a scale measuring promotion/prevention characteristics of objects, providing evidence for dimensionality, convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity. The resulting PM-PV scale allows promotion/prevention categorization for personal healthcare tools with potential for wider generalization.

Using Virtual World Technology to Deliver Educational Services

Despite increasing educational use of immersive virtual environments for seminars, lectures and teaching related events, there is an absence of ceremonial events such as graduation. Graduation is not simply an ‘event’ but a cultural practice, a ritual, marking alife-transition point and public recognition of achievement. This case study reports a recent innovation in the delivery of educational services in which university students take part in an official graduation using the virtual world technology, Second Life (http://www.secondlife.com). This case study has previously been reported in Keeling et al., 2009.

Making omnichannel an augmented reality: the current and future state of the art

Purpose This paper aims to explore the current and future roles of augmented reality (AR) as an enabler of omnichannel experiences across the customer journey. To advance the conceptual understanding and managerial exploitation of AR, the paper aims to synthesise current research, illustrating how a variety of current applications merge online and offline experiences, and provides a future research agenda to help advance the state of the art in AR. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on situated cognition theorising as a guiding framework, the paper reviews previously published research and currently deployed applications to provide a roadmap for future research efforts on AR-enabled omnichannel experiences across the customer journey. Findings AR offers myriad opportunities to provide customers with a seamless omnichannel journey, smoothing current obstacles, through a unique combination of embedded, embodied and extended customer experiences. These three principles constitute the overarching value drivers of AR and offer coherent, theory-driven organising principles for managers and researchers alike. Originality/value Current research has yet to provide a relevant, conceptually robust understanding of AR-enabled customer experiences. In light of the rapid development and widespread deployment of the technology, this paper provides an urgently needed framework for guiding the development of AR in an omnichannel context.