A Framework Study for Healthcare Information Systems

Healthcare information systems are crucial components for better coordination of healthcare. They focus on the proper generation, transmission, storage, and retrieval of health data. It is obvious that production of accurate, relevant, and timely health information is foundation of good decision making. Rapid progress in wireless communications and embedded systems result in wireless sensor networks to be employed even in biomedical applications as well as their prominent deployment options. This study proposes a healthcare information system framework which consists of such components as;wireless sensor networks, cellular networks, a MATLAB interface, a database, and a web based monitoring interface. A case study that includes sensing, transferring, storing and web based monitoring processes of ECG signal is also introduced in the study, so that the behavior of the system developed can be tested. The results show that the framework presented here can not only be employed as a healthcare information system, but it can also be used as an infrastructure in related research activities and consequently, lots of time can be saved from creating an experimental environment.

Impact of hospital size on healthcare information system effectiveness: evidence from healthcare data analytics

With the rapid development of information technology, the increasing use ofmobile digital devices and efforts from the whole society, the healthcareinformation systems (HISs) are moving towards a new era. However, there isstill a lack of clear understanding of the benefits of HIS at the hospital leveland the influential factors for HIS effectiveness. In this study, we propose aresearch framework to explain how HIS implementation improves hospitalperformance. Our results reinforce the positive effect of HIS on hospitalperformance. In particular, we found that HIS implementation increases boththe cost and revenue of the hospitals, but the increasing effect in revenue ismuch bigger than the increasing effect in cost. We also found that althoughboth small and big hospitals benefit from the implementation of HIS, the effectof size is different. Size has a positive effect on hospital performance for smallhospitals but has a negative effect on big hospitals. This indicates that thecompetitive advantage of economies of scale disappears for big hospitalsbecause the level of information transparency becomes lower and transactioncosts become higher as size increases.

Blockchain-Assisted Secure Fine-Grained Searchable Encryption for a Cloud-Based Healthcare Cyber-Physical System

The concept of sharing of personal health data over cloud storage in a healthcare-cyber physical system has become popular in recent times as it improves access quality.The privacy of health data can only be preserved by keeping it in an encrypted form,but it affects usability and flexibility in terms of effective search.Attribute-based searchable encryption(ABSE)has proven its worth by providing fine-grained searching capabilities in the shared cloud storage.However,it is not practical to apply this scheme to the devices with limited resources and storage capacity because a typical ABSE involves serious computations.In a healthcare cloud-based cyber-physical system(CCPS),the data is often collected by resource-constraint devices;therefore,here also,we cannot directly apply ABSE schemes.In the proposed work,the inherent computational cost of the ABSE scheme is managed by executing the computationally intensive tasks of a typical ABSE scheme on the blockchain network.Thus,it makes the proposed scheme suitable for online storage and retrieval of personal health data in a typical CCPS.With the assistance of blockchain technology,the proposed scheme offers two main benefits.First,it is free from a trusted authority,which makes it genuinely decentralized and free from a single point of failure.Second,it is computationally efficient because the computational load is now distributed among the consensus nodes in the blockchain network.Specifically,the task of initializing the system,which is considered the most computationally intensive,and the task of partial search token generation,which is considered as the most frequent operation,is now the responsibility of the consensus nodes.This eliminates the need of the trusted authority and reduces the burden of data users,respectively.Further,in comparison to existing decentralized fine-grained searchable encryption schemes,the proposed scheme has achieved a significant reduction in storage and computational cost for the secret key associated with users.It has been verified both theoretically and practically in the performance analysis section.

Sustainability of health information exchange platform based on information cooperation

Inactive user participants are an obstacle to the improvement of the sustainability of health information exchange platforms.First,the evolutionary game model of patients and healthcare providers participating in information sharing under four value-based healthcare delivery modes,i.e.,traditional medical model,collaborative care,self-managed care(SMC),and healthcare value co-creation(HVC),is constructed.Second,co-creators'initial participation ratio,information quality,which can trigger deviation from equilibrium sustainability in the dynamic process,is analyzed.Results show that extensive patient participation is more helpful to sustainable platform operation than provider participation.Moreover,quality patient data are more conducive to transforming the healthcare model from SMC to HVC than healthcare provider data.

Medical Information Breaches Occurrence with Respect to Social Media Usage, in Selected Medical Institutions in Uganda

The purpose of this manuscript is to present research findings based on the reported cases of medical information breaches due to Social Media (SM) usage, in selected medical institutions in Uganda. The study employed online survey techniques. Altogether, 710 questionnaires (Google forms) were developed, and operationalized. The main respondents included 566 medical students, and 143 medical staff from Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST), and Kampala International University (KIU), accordingly. Using SPSS, the main statistical analysis tools employed include frequency distribution summary, and Chi-square (x2) test. According to the frequency distribution summary, 27% to 42% of the respondents within categorical divides acknowledged occurrence of medical information breaches due to SM usage. Notably, higher levels of the breaches were reported among male students (64%), age-group 18 to 35 years (68%), and WhatsApp users (63%). On the other hand, Chi-square results showed significant levels (p p > 0.05) between medical institutions and medical information breaches. Overall, the vulnerable areas of the breaches identified would serve as important reference points in the process of rationalizing SM usage in medical institutions. Nevertheless, further studies could focus on identification of the key SM usage factors associated with medical information breaches in medical institutions in Uganda.

HealthyBlockchain for Global Patients

An emerging healthcare delivery model is enabling a new era of clinical care based on well-informed decision-making processes.Current healthcare information systems(HISs)fall short of adopting this model due to a conflict between information security needed to implement the new model and those already enforced locally to support traditional care models.Meanwhile,in recent times,the healthcare sector has shown a substantial interest in the potential of using blockchain technology for providing quality care to patients.No blockchain solution proposed so far has fully addressed emerging cross-organization information-sharing needs in healthcare.In this paper,we aim to study the use of blockchain in equipping struggling HISs to cope with the demands of the new healthcare delivery model,by proposing HealthyBlockchain as a granular patient-centered ledger that digitally tracks a patient’s medical transactions all along the treatment pathway to support the care teams.The patient-centered ledger is a neutral tamper-proof trail timestamp block sequence that governs distributed patient information across the decentralized discrete HISs.HealthyBlockchain connects patients,clinicians,and healthcare providers to facilitate a transparent,trustworthy,and secure supporting platform.

Best Practices and Innovative Scenarios of Integrated Patient Data Management to Improve Continuity of Care and Scientific Research

Clinical data have strong features of complexity and multi-disciplinarity. Clinical data are generated both from the documentation of physicians＇ interactions with the patient and by diagnostic systems. During the care process, a number of different actors and roles （physicians, specialists, nurses, etc.） have the need to access patient data and document clinical activities in different moments and settings. Thus, data sharing and flexible aggregation based on different users＇ needs have become more and more important for supporting continuity of care at home, at hospitals, at outpatient clinics. In this paper, the authors identify and describe needs and challenges for patient data management at provider level and regional- （or inter-organizational-） level, because nowadays sharing patient data is needed to improve continuity and quality of care. For each level, the authors describe state-of-the-art Information and Communication Technology solutions to collect, manage, aggregate and share patient data. For each level some examples of best practices and solution scenarios being implemented in the Italian Healthcare setting are described as well.