Fozia Anwar

Barriers in Adoption of Health Information Technology in Developing Societies

This paper develops the conceptual framework of barriers faced by the decision makers and management personnel of health sector. The main theme of this paper is to give a clear understanding about the adaption barriers of health technology faced by developing societies. The information about barriers would be useful for policy makers to decide about the particular technology. So that they can fulfill the defined mission of their organizations. Developing a conceptual framework is the first step in building organizational capacity. Information technology in health sector is spreading globally. Use of health information technology is offering evidence-based practice to endorse health and human prosperity. Globalization of health information system is inevitable for establishment and promotion of healthcare sector in developing societies. Present health systems in developing societies are inadequate to meet the needs of the population. Health sector of developing societies is facing a lot of barriers in establishment and promotion of health information system. These barriers include lack of infrastructure, cost, technical sophistications, lack of skilled human resources and lack of e- readiness of medical professionals. In this paper authors conducted a survey of hospitals in Pakistan to identify and categorized adaption barriers in health information technology. Existing health system should be transformed by using HIT to improve health status of population by eliminating barriers identified in this paper.

Book Review: Networks of the Brain

Natural systems consisting of living systems as well as some artificial systems (Altamimi and Ramadan, 2016; Batool and Niazi, 2017) can be classified as Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) (Holland, 2012). These systems have complexity in terms of having nonlinear interactions between numerous agents—interactions which cannot be easily summarized. CAS also have some rather peculiar properties—they adapt such that individual agents do not matter—an example being of cells which can continually get replaced with no discernable loss of overall emergent functionality. Examples of CAS include humans or animals. Such systems simply cannot be understood by dissection or only from the perspective of being made up of a wide variety of cells or elements/compounds for that matter. CAS are all around us and even inside us. Human beings consist of numerous hierarchical and intertwined CAS both individually as well as collectively. CAS are so close and abundant on this planet that it is actually very difficult think of anything with no link to a CAS—hence we cannot see the forest for the trees. The only way to make sense of CAS seems to be to develop various types of models or simplified abstractions of complex real-world systems. Modeling takes out any unnecessary details—example being of maps (Miller and Page, 2007). Maps provide information about the real-world and yet do not cover every possible detail. Likewise, agents and networks can be used to model the real world or concepts inspired (Zedadra et al., 2017) by the real world. Like maps, there are models which are more appropriate to modeling CAS. These include agentbased, complex network based (Mrvar and Batagelj, 2016), and multiscale models. The book which is being reviewed here applies the complex network approach to modeling the brain.

Role of information communication technology for evidence based medicine among physicians

In the current globalization age, Information communication technology (ICT) is diffusing its applications and services to every domain. The role of ICT in health care sector cannot be ignored as healthcare is directly associated with human lives. ICT empowers healthcare personnel in achieving high productivity and better accuracy in the clinical tasks by practicing evidence based medicine (EBM). This is a cross sectional quantitative study exploring the role of ICT and information systems for EBM. It is identified that clinical care personnel recognize the benefits to adopt ICT in the clinical educational workplaces for EBM. However they feel frustrated by workload preventing access to information technology, limitations of technology access and lack of opportunities for training in ICT. It is evident from this research that familiarity, use and self-confidence in the use of ICT is somewhat greater in personnel who have a recent tertiary education.

Investigating the Empirical Relation and Importance of Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use and Intention to Use Online Information Resources for Evidence Based Medicine

This study explores the empirical relationship and importance of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and intention to use online information resources for Evidence-based Medicine (EBM). Although a significant literature is available that investigates the effect of various factors on intention to use digital information sources to practice EBM in developed countries. However, literature is a lacking in exploring the intention to practice EBM by physicians in developing countries like Pakistan. This is the motivation behind this study. This research is a cross sectional quantitative survey study (N=352). Based on related literature a questionnaire was developed. Selected participant sample of the survey is those physicians, who were in clinical practice and were having the knowledge of EBM. Structural equation modelling technique (SEM) with the Analysis of Moment Structures software (AMOS) is used for data analysis. The findings showed the significance and causal linkage between perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and intention to use online information resources for EBM. Perceived usefulness is found as a strong predictor in acceptance and behavioral intention as compared to the perceived ease of use.

A Review On Cognitive Mismatch Between Computer and Information Technology And Physicians

Health Information Technology has a great potential to transform the existing health care systems by making them safe, effective and efficient. Multi-functionality and interoperability of health information systems are very important functions. Hence these features cannot be achieved without addressing the knowledge and skills of the health care personnel. There is a great mismatch between Information Technology knowledge and skills of physicians as this discipline is completely missing in their educational tenure. So usability of health information technologies and system as well as evidence based practice in the future can be improved by addressing this cognitive mismatch. This will result in persistent partnership in HIS design between physician and IT personnel to get maximum usibility of the systems,