Wullianallur Raghupathi

Big data analytics in healthcare: promise and potential

ObjectiveTo describe the promise and potential of big data analytics in healthcare.MethodsThe paper describes the nascent field of big data analytics in healthcare, discusses the benefits, outlines an architectural framework and methodology, describes examples reported in the literature, briefly discusses the challenges, and offers conclusions.ResultsThe paper provides a broad overview of big data analytics for healthcare researchers and practitioners.ConclusionsBig data analytics in healthcare is evolving into a promising field for providing insight from very large data sets and improving outcomes while reducing costs. Its potential is great; however there remain challenges to overcome.

Strategic IT applications in health care

Accordingly, using IT in a strategic and innovative manner to support health-related decision making represents a serious challenge for health care organization management, as well as for systems developers. Traditional, nonstrategic IT focuses on information processing, mostly for well-structured, routine task situations and operational work processes (such as patient data management systems for streamlining patient admissions and bed assignments). Such applications are concerned primarily with improving the efficiency of operational tasks, rather than the effectiveness of strategic and integrative decision processes. In this sense, strategic IT focuses on the information requirements of ad hoc and poorly structured decision tasks. The applications concentrate on giving an organization an IT-based strategy for meeting competitive challenges (such as by using emerging Web technologies to integrate health care organizaInformation technology plays an increasingly central role in the U.S. health care industry. A survey by Sheldon I. Dorenfest & Associates of Chicago estimated IT spending on health care in 2002 would be

Health care information systems

21.6 billion [9]. Further exponential growth can be expected as the industry implements further large-scale electronic medical record keeping; provides remote diagnostics via telemedicine; upgrades hospital information systems (HISs); sets up intranets and extranets for sharing information; and uses public networks, including the Internet and community health information networks, to distribute health-related information.

Exploring a model-driven architecture (MDA) approach to health care information systems development.

A health care information provider system may provide information about health care objects managed by a health care provider. A name generating system may generate an object name for each of the health care objects which may include provider information indicative of the identity of the health care provider which manages the health care object, and object information indicative of the identity of the health care object. The object information may be devoid of any personal health information, even in a form which can be decrypted by a decryption key. A computer system appliance may protect the privacy of medical record information stored in a computer information storage system and may include a medical record distribution compartment, a medical record acquisition compartment, and a security compartment. The medical record distribution compartment and the medical record acquisition compartment may be configured to communicate with one another only thought the security compartment.

An Overview of Health Analytics

OBJECTIVE To explore the potential of the model-driven architecture (MDA) in health care information systems development. METHODS An MDA is conceptualized and developed for a health clinic system to track patient information. A prototype of the MDA is implemented using an advanced MDA tool. The UML provides the underlying modeling support in the form of the class diagram. The PIM to PSM transformation rules are applied to generate the prototype application from the model. RESULTS The result of the research is a complete MDA methodology to developing health care information systems. Additional insights gained include development of transformation rules and documentation of the challenges in the application of MDA to health care. Design guidelines for future MDA applications are described. The model has the potential for generalizability. The overall approach supports limited interoperability and portability. CONCLUSION The research demonstrates the applicability of the MDA approach to health care information systems development. When properly implemented, it has the potential to overcome the challenges of platform (vendor) dependency, lack of open standards, interoperability, portability, scalability, and the high cost of implementation.

The state and profile of open source software projects in health and medical informatics.

Objectives: We examine the emerging health analytics field by describing the different health analytics and providing examples of various applications. Methods: The paper discusses different definitions of health analytics, describes the four stages of health analytics, its architectural framework, development methodology, and examples in public health. Results: The paper provides a broad overview of health analytics for researchers and practitioners. Conclusions: Health analytics is rapidly emerging as a key and distinct application of health information technology. The key objective of health analytics is to gain insight for making informed healthcare decisions.

A Panel Analysis of the Strategic Association Between Information and Communication Technology and Public Health Delivery

PURPOSE Little has been published about the application profiles and development patterns of open source software (OSS) in health and medical informatics. This study explores these issues with an analysis of health and medical informatics related OSS projects on SourceForge, a large repository of open source projects. METHODOLOGY A search was conducted on the SourceForge website during the period from May 1 to 15, 2007, to identify health and medical informatics OSS projects. This search resulted in a sample of 174 projects. A Java-based parser was written to extract data for several of the key variables of each project. Several visually descriptive statistics were generated to analyze the profiles of the OSS projects. RESULTS Many of the projects have sponsors, implying a growing interest in OSS among organizations. Sponsorship, we discovered, has a significant impact on project success metrics. Nearly two-thirds of the projects have a restrictive license type. Restrictive licensing may indicate tighter control over the development process. Our sample includes a wide range of projects that are at various stages of development (status). Projects targeted towards the advanced end user are primarily focused on bio-informatics, data formats, database and medical science applications. CONCLUSION We conclude that there exists an active and thriving OSS development community that is focusing on health and medical informatics. A wide range of OSS applications are in development, from bio-informatics to hospital information systems. A profile of OSS in health and medical informatics emerges that is distinct and unique to the health care field. Future research can focus on OSS acceptance and diffusion and impact on cost, efficiency and quality of health care.

Research Themes and Trends in Health Information Systems

Background In this exploratory research, we use panel data analysis to examine the correlation between Information and Communication Technology (ICTs) and public health delivery at the country level. Objective The goal of this exploratory research is to examine the strategic association over time between ICTs and country-level public health. Methods Using data from the World Development Indicators, we construct a panel data set of countries of five different income levels and look closely at the period from 2000 to 2008. The panel data analysis allows us to explore this dynamic relationship under the control for unobserved country-specific effects by using a fixed-effects estimation method. In particular,, we examine the association of five ICT factors with five public health indicators: adolescent fertility rate, child immunization coverage, tuberculosis case detected, life expectancy, and adult mortality rate. Results First, overall ICTs’ factors substantially improve a country’s public health delivery on the top of wealth effect. Second, among all the ICTs’ factors, accessibility is the only one that is associated with improvements in all aspects of public health delivery, while the contributions from the usage, quality, and applications are negligible. ICTs’ accessibility factor is associated with a considerable extension to life expectancy and reduced adult mortality rate. Third, all entity-specific factors are significant in each model, indicating that countries’ economic development level does influence their public health delivery. Conclusions Our results indicate that ICT accessibility has a strong association with effective delivery of public health. There are others, but the key strategic applications are eHealth and mHealth. The findings of this study will help government officials and public health policy makers to formulate strategic decisions regarding the best ICT investments and deployment. For example, the study shows that providing accessibility should be a critical focus.

An Eclipse-based development approach to health information technology.

OBJECTIVES The health information systems (HIS) field is characterized as being associated with health care and information systems. Drawing on several disciplines, a body of knowledge has come together that help define the core internal structure of the field. This study attempts to identify the emerging sub-fields using the bibliometric technique of author-cocitation analysis. METHODS Co-citation data for members of editorial boards of several health information systems journals for the period of 1998-2006 was collected and analyzed (N = 166). We performed numerous multivariate analyses, including cluster analysis, factor analysis and multidimensional scaling to extract the sub-fields. RESULTS Our findings indicate the presence of several strong sub-fields, including HIS evaluation, communication and e-health, and clinical DSS. In addition, we identified other sub-fields that are distinct but still emerging, such as adoption, outcome and policy, and use and impact of HIS. The study also confirms the existence of several historical sub-fields and contrasts technology-oriented sub-fields with management-oriented sub-fields. Topics on the periphery of HIS provide links to other disciplines as well. CONCLUSIONS The study provides a unique perspective on the field of HIS, and the results indicate opportunities for further research that explores collaborations and social networks among the sub-fields.

Web-Based Corporate Governance Information Disclosure: An Empirical Investigation

The rapid proliferation of applications--electronic health record and clinical decision support systems among them--cannot keep up with the growing needs of healthcare delivery organisations. The absence of uniform standards and interoperability has hindered the successful deployment and acceptance of these applications. Eclipse and other open source applications have the potential to fill some of these gaps. The benefits include acceptance of open standards, enabling interoperability and scalability, prevention of vendor lock-in and lower costs. In this paper, we describe an Eclipse-based open source electronic health record application, a prototype. We contrast the Eclipse approach to other development approaches. Implementation is feasible and provides customization, although there are challenges to overcome. We envision organisations adopting open source development tools as alternatives to vendor-driven, proprietary systems.