Khalil Khoumbati

Integration Technology Adoption in Healthcare Organisations: A Case for Enterprise Application Integration

A continuous technological innovation in software has brought development in integration technologies that promise the real time enterprise-wide systems integration. Healthcare organisations continue to struggle with integration challenges. However, much confusion regarding the adoption of integration technologies still remains. To provide a clear perspective about integration technologies, a discussion is presented on these technologies such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) and Web Services. EAI has emerged to provide significant benefits to organisations. From a technical perspective, EAI addresses integration problems at all integration levels (e.g. data level and process level) by providing a flexible and manageable IT infrastructure. From a business perspective EAI reduces the overall integration cost due to the reduction in integration time and maintenance cost. This paper attempts to present the advantages and disadvantages of these technologies. Furthermore, a comparative analysis of these technologies is presented. Thus, it can facilitate to healthcare organisations decision-makers during the adoption of integration technologies.

Broadband adoption in Pakistan

The aim of this study is to provide a context for understanding the factors affecting the adoption of broadband internet in a developing country context, in this instance, Pakistan. In order to achieve the stated aim, this study identified and examined various attitudinal, normative and control factors to provide insights into broadband adoption. The data on these variables was collected using a survey approach. A self-administered questionnaire was sent between October and December 2006 to 275 consumers, with a total of 237 responses obtained from the respondents. The findings of this paper suggest that primary influence, facilitating conditions resources, cost and perceived ease of use are significant factors for explaining behavioural intentions to adopt broadband in Pakistan. The paper also outlines the theoretical contributions, implications for practice and limitations of this research.

Application of fuzzy simulation for the evaluation of enterprise application integration in healthcare organisations

A column unit, in particular a chair column unit, including a base tube (310) and a pneumatic spring (318), further comprises an axially movable guide bushing (314) which is inserted in an axially movable manner in the upper end (310b) of the base tube (310), and which encloses an axially movable part (318b) of the pneumatic spring (318). An exit movement of the guide bushing (314) can be effected, e.g., by driver- or pusher-stops (326, 314g). The exit movement is restricted by pullout-restricting stops (316, 312g) which are releasable for the disassembly of the column unit.

Investigating enterprise application integration benefits and barriers in healthcare organisations: an exploratory case study

Over the years, healthcare organisations have focused on the latest technological innovations to overcome their organisational problems. There was rarely a single approach for implementing Information Systems (IS), as healthcare organisations have developed their applications without a common enterprise architectural planning. Nowadays, dozens, if not hundreds of different types of open and proprietary systems exist in healthcare organisations. This growing complexity of healthcare IS has driven IS managers to seek applicable solutions for integrating their systems. As a result, different integration efforts have continuously been made to overcome integration problems. Recently technological developments have emerged in the area of integration technology such as enterprise application integration (EAI) and web services. This paper seeks to expand the knowledge on EAI, and focuses on understanding the EAI benefits and barriers in healthcare organisations.

On demand radio frequency identification based vehicle tracking system

Over the years, many systems have addressed the problem of location sensing. In the past, geographic positioning systems (GPS) have been widely used to track moving objects located outside environments. These systems have several problems such as operational, environmental and high cost. The fixed GPS infrastructure causes several problems in wireless systems. Thus, GPS is considered not a suitable solution for the fixed environment. Due to this, there is a need for the system that can be replaced with less effort to meet future needs. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to discuss the available wireless technologies like radio frequency identification (RFID) techniques and mobile ad hoc sensor network. In doing so, the application of these technologies for remote objects information acquisition and tracking of moving objects is discussed. Further, the authors attempt to develop a communications setup for highways of Pakistan by using RFID and wireless sensor networks techniques to build a network that can be used for object tracking and information acquisition of moving vehicles on highways. This system may be used for variety of purposes especially for security enhancements at highways.

Evaluation of investment for enterprise application integration technology in healthcare organisations: a cost-benefit approach,

Recent developments in the field of Information Technology (IT), such as integration technologies have promised to bring improvements in the quality of services; however, costs of these technologies are relatively high. Consequently, investment justification for these technologies is one of the many challenges that are faced by managers in healthcare organisations. IT investments in healthcare organisations are usually justified using traditional investment-appraisal techniques such as Return on Investment (ROI) analysis, internal rate of return, net present value and payback approach. The techniques are specifically used to measure the financial impact of the investment; therefore, the techniques are limited to accommodate human and organisational benefits associated with the adoption of integration technologies. In exploring this phenomenon, the paper focuses on benefits and costs of Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) adoption in healthcare organisations. This may be useful for the managers in preparing investment budget proposals.

SYSTEM SUPPORT FOR MANAGING INVALID BINDINGS

Context-aware adaptation is a central aspect of pervasive computing applications, enabling them to adapt and perform tasks based on contextual information. One of the aspects of context-aware adaptation is reconfiguration in which bindings are created between application component and remote services in order to realize new behaviour in response to contextual information. Various research efforts provide reconfiguration support and allow the development of adaptive context-aware applications from high-level specifications, but don’t consider failure conditions that might arise during execution of such applications, making bindings between application and remote services invalid. To this end, we propose and implement our design approach to reconfiguration to manage invalid bindings. The development and modification of adaptive context-aware applications is a complex task, and an issue of an invalidity of bindings further complicates development efforts. To reduce the development efforts, our approach provides an applicationtransparent solution where the issue of the invalidity of bindings is handled by our system, Policy-Based Contextual Reconfiguration and Adaptation (PCRA) 1 , not by an application developer. In this paper, we present and describe our approach to managing invalid bindings and compare it with other approaches to this problem. We also provide performance evaluation of our approach.

Testing and validating the ERP success evaluation model for higher education institutes of Pakistan

Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan has taken profound measures to bring significant improvement in universities of Pakistan. HEC signed an agreement with Oracle PeopleSoft to equip universities with high-tech information technology (IT) solutions. To this end, HEC initially implemented enterprise resource planning (ERP) campus management system in seven universities of Pakistan as a pilot project. However, there is a void in literature to evaluate these ERP implementations. This research formulates a conceptual model based on strong background theories to effectively evaluate the success of ERP system implementation. A questionnaire based online survey approach is used to collect data from 323 respondents. Findings of the paper result in a refined model for analysing success of ERP implementation. By employing this model, the paper also reports on the success and failure of ERP implementation. Finally, the undertaken study implies that its findings may substantially add regarding the future decisions of ERP implementations.

Integration of Public Sector Healthcare Information Systems with Private Sector Healthcare Providers in Pakistan: Challenges, Opportunities and Solutions

Globally the implementation of information and communication technology (ICT) in the healthcare sector has brought about significant improvement in the delivery of healthcare services, yet such transformation is still under way or in its infancy in many developing countries. Pakistan is a lower middle-income country (LMIC) where the health status of population and management of health systems data are very poor. In Pakistan, healthcare services are being provided by public and private sector organisations as well as by individual practitioners. Healthcare delivery and disease monitoring and evaluation are supported by health information systems (HISs) and district health information systems (DHIS). However, like in many other LMICs, implementation of HIS and DHIS is under-deployed in Pakistan mainly due to non-integration of public and private healthcare providers’ information systems. Thus there is a pressing need for exploring and facilitating the effective use and integration of public sector DHIS with the private healthcare sector in Pakistan (as well as other similar LMICs) – not only for the diagnosis, monitoring and healthcare delivery in general but also for planning and decision-making processes. Such a systemic change will usher in a new era of increased availability of high-quality accessible and relevant health information, which will be of great benefit to the population’s health.