Rajeev K. Bali

Developing a BPI framework and PAM for SMEs.

Purpose – The last decade has seen much interest in small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) from successive UK Governments highlighting the importance of this sector to the wealth‐creating process of the UK economy. World‐class manufacturing (WCM) is a set of methodologies that are used by organisations to compete globally and continuously improve their competitiveness. Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are now competing at a global level and many are world‐class. The majority of the companies that make up the OEMs supply chains are SMEs. It is, therefore, imperative that SMEs also improve their competitiveness to a world‐class level. This paper aims to address these issues.Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses a triangulation methodology consisting of a literature review, analysis of a 150‐company survey and semi‐structured interviews in the development of the business process improvement (BPI) framework and performance assessment methodology (PAM) tool.Findings – This study advocates a p...

Merger of knowledge management and information technology in healthcare: opportunities and challenges

In the last 10 years, the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) revolution has redefined the structure of the 21st century healthcare organization. It is clear that the 21st century healthcare organization will bring about new healthcare services and that traditional management and technological concepts would not be the appropriate conduit for disseminating these new healthcare services. The fundamental challenge faced by the 21st century clinical practitioner is to acquire proficiency in understanding and interpreting clinical information so as to attain knowledge and wisdom. An additional challenge that must be considered is that clinical practitioners make potentially life-saving decisions whilst attempting to deal with large amounts of clinical data. We focus on the emergence of telehealth as an alternative implementation for transfer of medical information using futuristic Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). We contend that current healthcare applications are being used in a static manner; futuristic applications will need to be dynamic in nature and would call for the transfer of context-based healthcare information. A Knowledge Management (KM) solution would allow healthcare institutions to give clinical data context, so as to allow knowledge derivation for more effective clinical diagnosis. It would also provide a mechanism for effective transfer of the acquired knowledge in order to aid healthcare workers as and when required Using data inputs from our collaborating organization, Applied Network Solutions (ANS), we argue that healthcare institutions that integrate KM and ICT into their main organizational processes are more likely to survive and prosper. These organizations would have a profound understanding of how to use clinical information for creating value in tangible and intangible terms.

Knowledge Management Primer

The discipline of Knowledge Management (KM) is rapidly becoming established as an essential course or module in both information systems and management programs around the world. Many KM texts pitch theoretical issues at too technical or high a level, or presenting a only a theoretical prescriptive treatment of knowledge or KM modeling problems. The Knowledge Management Primer provides students with an essential understanding of KM approaches by examining the purpose and nature of its key components. The book demystifies the KM field by explaining in a precise, accessible manner the key concepts of KM tools, strategies, and techniques, and their benefits to contemporary organizations. Readers will find this book filled with approaches to managing and developing KM that are underpinned by theory and research, are integrative in nature, and address softer approaches in manifesting and recognizing knowledge.

Electronic health records approaches and challenges: a comparison between Malaysia and four East Asian countries

An integrated Lifetime Health Record (LHR) is fundamental for achieving seamless and continuous access to patient medical information and for the continuum of care. However, the aim has not yet been fully realised. The efforts are actively progressing around the globe. Every stage of the development of the LHR initiatives had presented peculiar challenges. The best lessons in life are those of someone elses experiences. This paper presents an overview of the development approaches undertaken by four East Asian countries in implementing a national Electronic Health Record (EHR) in the public health system. The major challenges elicited from the review including integration efforts, process reengineering, funding, people, and law and regulation will be presented, compared, discussed and used as lessons learned for the further development of the Malaysian integrated LHR.

Workflow management systems: the healthcare technology of the future?

In recent years, healthcare institutions have had problems accessing and maintaining the large amounts of data they deal with. This paper identifies current approaches and technologies which relate to patient administration systems. It argues that, in the near future, WWW-based multimedia patient administration systems would become the norm for healthcare institutions. The development and acceptance of web-based multimedia patient administration systems is likely to aggravate the problem of healthcare institutions being flooded with large amounts of clinical data. A large amount of clinical procedures relating to patient management are repetitive and Workflow Management Systems (WFMS) can automate these repeated activities. We believe that the introduction of WFMS would enable healthcare institutions to face this challenge of transforming large amounts of medical data into contextually relevant clinical information. The central contention of this paper is that there is a dynamic connection between healthcare, workflow and internet technologies, which is being ignored. This paper further establishes that it is possible to build a virtual electronic health record database based on the client server architecture using current internet and object-oriented (OO) technologies.

Using actor network theory to understand network centric healthcare operations

The adoption and diffusion of e-health and the application of ICT in healthcare is being heralded as the panacea with both European and US governments making e-health a priority on their agendas. In this context, a model of networkcentric healthcare operations has been proffered as the best way to maximise the benefits of ICT use in healthcare. We suggest that, before we can move forward and realise such a state, it is vital to examine the critical issues, likely barriers and facilitators and, most importantly, the critical success factors. To do this however, we need an appropriate cognitive lens through which we can capture all the complexities of healthcare dynamics. In this paper we suggest why Actor Network Theory (ANT) should be this lens.

Enabling superior m-health project success: a tricountry validation

The healthcare industry is facing increasing pressures to embrace new technologies that support greater patient access to, and higher quality of (but at the same time offer cost-effective), healthcare delivery. This pressure has spawned a plethora of initiatives to embrace the possibilities and potentials of technologies to develop and then diffuse new devices, new pharmaceutical products and support minimal invasive surgical techniques that will facilitate superior healthcare delivery. Pursuing such initiatives from idea generation to commercialisation and adoption, however, also necessitates new alliances between academe and industry to ensure rigorous research followed by rapid diffusion to support the realisation of these initiatives so that the patient becomes the ultimate beneficiary. This in turn requires new research methodologies for such applied research scenarios. The Accelerated Mapping-to-Realisation (AMR) methodology is used as an appropriate knowledge-based methodology to ensure academic rigour and validation and also facilitate rapid diffusion and commercialisation of m-health initiatives.

Telemedicine trends and challenges: a technology management perspective

After four generations of varied applications, telemedicine now finds itself at a crossroads. Validated concepts have integrated the available technology to handle the basic system components, as well as data and information processing, in multiple manners. Medical data exchange has been tested as a result. Among the multiple technology evolutions that could be identified as significant trends we have selected four - wireless broadband, non-invasive sensors, emerging multimedia standards, and open source software - which are likely to have an impact on the current telemedicine progression, at the functional and economic levels. What follows is a description of each technologys main characteristics.

Towards a practical healthcare information security model for healthcare institutions

In recent years, a number of countries have introduced plans for national electronic patient record (EPR) systems. This paper argues that, in the near future, both patients and healthcare stakeholders will be able to access medical records from WWW-based EPR systems. We contend that the primary impediment to the successful implementation and widespread uptake of the EPR concept is the fact that current healthcare information security (HIS) applications are not sufficiently robust. This paper identifies two main Information Security technologies: 1) Public key infrastructure (PKI) and 2) Biometrics that hold a lot of promise in a healthcare context. The key contribution of this paper is to propose a novel multi-layered HIS framework based on a combination of PKI, Smartcard and Biometrics technologies. We argue that this new HIS framework could assist healthcare institutions to provide a truly secure infrastructure for the electronic transmission of clinical data in the future. This paper also makes a case for the creation of a new nodal HIS body because existing information security bodies like the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams are for general-purpose organizations and not specifically suited for the healthcare sector.

Telehealth systems: considering knowledge management and ICT issues

We examine the factors necessary for telehealth implementations in healthcare organisations. We focus on the transfer of medical information using information and communication technologies (ICT). The paper identifies current applications of telehealth and telemedicine. It contends that we are using such applications in a static manner, whilst futuristic systems would be dynamic in nature and would support the transfer of context-based information. This could make web-based multimedia patient administration systems the norm for healthcare institutions. Such a scenario is likely to lead to a situation where healthcare institutions would be flooded with large amounts of clinical data. The introduction of the knowledge management (KM) paradigm would enable healthcare institutions to face the challenge of transforming large amounts of medical data into relevant clinical information. A KM solution would allow healthcare institutions to give clinical data context, so as to allow knowledge derivation for more effective clinical diagnoses. It would also provide a mechanism for the effective transfer of the acquired knowledge so as to aid telecare workers, as and when required.