[AISWorld] Submission Extension for CFP for the International Journal of Healthcare Information Systems and Informatics (IJHISI)

Sun Oct 17 23:45:05 EDT 2010

*****SUBMISSIONS WILL CONTINUE TO BE ACCEPTED UNTIL 15 NOVEMBER 2010*****

Making Music Out of Noise: Transforming the Business of Healthcare with 

Information Systems

Call for Papers to be Published in the 

International Journal of Healthcare Information Systems and Informatics (IJHISI)

Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Joseph Tan

by

Guest Editors:

Chon Abraham

Wendy Currie

Monica Garfield

chon.abraham at mason.wm.edu

Wendy.Currie at wbs.ac.uk

mgarfield at bentley.edu

The noise of how to transform healthcare organizations into more efficient and effective institutions to improve quality and reduce costs is deafening in this current era for many countries. Healthcare reform involving information systems and technology has taken center stage in many of the industrialized countries regarding reducing cost, improving quality, and extending access [8]. The current era in the US is marred by (1) national reports indicating that over 98,000 people die each year in hospitals due to medical errors [5]; (2) a health system use whose high costs (often due to inefficiencies in the business of healthcare) are resulting in an increase in the number of uninsured and underinsured people in the US despite the US per capita expenditures on healthcare being the highest internationally [12]; and (3) service capacity limitations, partly due to severe workforce shortages, are expected to be exacerbated as the baby boomers flood Medicare and the elder population rises to comprise 20% of the population by 2020 [1]. Information systems (IS - primarily electronic medical records, computerized physician order entry, telemedicine applications, decision support tools and supporting devices) is positioned as an instrument for making music out of noise in the healthcare industry.  Despite substantial governmental incentives and subsidies ($20 billion [13]) for use of healthcare IS to automate manual error laden processes, anxiety is running high amongst healthcare organizations embarking on IS projects [7]. Such is the same in other national governments, international consortiums, and individual organizations embarking on extensive IS implementations to improve or reform healthcare delivery [3]. Some healthcare organizations are taking a "wait and see what becomes the industry standard" strategy while others promote being pro-active in the adoption of technology to ensure that they are not on the tail end of government financial support to implement healthcare IS [8].  Regardless of the strategy a healthcare organization ascribes to, success of the strategy depends on managing the transformation process involving IS innovation in light of institutionalized practices that are often prohibitive to embracing transformation with technology.  In order to successfully manage the process, one must have a multi-stakeholder focus including human, organizational, and technical issues [6, 9, 10]. However, the healthcare industry has historically been considered a technological laggard and lacks direction for how to successfully manage transformation involving the implementation of new technologies, especially in the US.  This is evident by a the fact that only a little over 1/3 of the 5,166 US hospitals have implemented any component of healthcare IS and only 15 hospitals having fully implemented the highest category of technology (i.e., full electronic medical record, interoperable capabilities to transfer medical data, a data warehouse and capabilities to perform data analytics [4]). The noise of all the various options and paths forward is deafening, which is a hindrance to adoption [2]. However, with the formation of theoretically grounded models that healthcare organizational leaders can employ, the noise can transform into melodious harmony.

This special issue welcomes papers concerning research, practice, experience, current issues and debates that consider interdisciplinary applied and theoretically oriented frames to demonstrate or propose how healthcare organizations are or should incorporate information technology to transform any aspect of the business of healthcare.  Possible themes related to this focus are as follows but not limited to:

·         Application or exploration of business process management (BPM)

o   Do traditional applications of IS in BPM models apply in healthcare?

o   What are the nuances in healthcare to consider in BPM incorporating IS?

o   How do different BPM approaches involving IS vary based on the size of the organization and scope of vertical integration (i.e., single hospitals compared to networks)?

o   How can BPM stimulate adoption of healthcare IS?

·         Identification of new business models and BPM practices for their success in healthcare

o   How can regional partnerships for sharing information via technology between healthcare organizations improve quality, cost, and access of care?

o   What are the barriers to healthcare organizations using new innovative business models and technological innovations to transform care delivery?

o    With rising expenses in care, over capacitated healthcare systems in which elder populations consume the majority of resources, how can telemedicine be more efficiently incorporated into healthcare delivery models to extend care beyond the acute care setting?

o   How can healthcare providers employ BPM to move from a fragmented to an integrated solution using information communication technology and develop a market approach (i.e., variety and choice of service providers for patients) to change or in spite of institutionalized prohibitive practices in care delivery?

·         Comparisons between healthcare organizations regarding various experiences with transformation

o   Does organizational culture or national culture influence the transformation effort or adoption of IS for use in healthcare?

o   How are leading industrialized countries incorporating IS in healthcare reform initiatives and what are the implications for global transformation?

Submission Information

Please refer to submission details for the journal available at http://www.igi-global.com/Bookstore/TitleDetails.aspx?TitleId=1094&DetailsType=CallForPapers <http://www.igi-global.com/Bookstore/TitleDetails.aspx?TitleId=1094&DetailsType=CallForPapers> 

Papers presented at the Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS) 2010 in the SIGHEALTH mini-tracks are especially welcomed and will be fast tracked in the review process.

Co-editors' Biographies

Chon Abraham (chon.abraham at mason.wm.edu) is an Assistant Professor of Management Information Systems (MIS) at the Mason School of Business, College of William and Mary. Her research interests mainly include HIS and emerging technologies. She received a Fulbright Research Award to conduct a comparative study of healthcare IS proliferation in the US and Japan in 2008-2009 and an IBM Center for Healthcare Management grant to research and report on mobile information communication technology usage amongst nurses in 2005.  She is a co-investigator for a Veterans Administration Medical Center concerning home health technology. She has published various monographs and book chapter regarding HIS and articles in various journals such as Business Intelligence Journal, Communications of the ACM, Data Base, Decision Support Systems, Journal of Healthcare Information Management, and Encyclopedia for Healthcare Information Systems. Dr. Abraham holds a PhD from the University of Georgia, an MBA from the Old Dominion University, and a BS from the US Military Academy at West Point.

Wendy Currie (wendy.currie at wbs.ac.uk) is a Professor of Information Systems in the Information Systems and Management group at the University of Warwick, Coventry, UK. She was formerly a Professor of IS at Brunel and Sheffield universities. She is a Principal Investigator of EPSRC and ESRC (Paccit/Link) funded research into e-business models and emerging technologies. Currently she is serving on the editorial boards of the Journal of Information Technology; Journal of Strategic Information Systems; Journal of Change Management and the Journal of Enterprise Information Management. Formally, she served as Associate Editor for Management Information Systems Quarterly and the European Journal of Information Systems. She has also served on the editorial boards for special issues in MISQ and Information Systems Research. She served as the European, Middle East and Africa representative for the Association for Information Systems, and is was a joint Conference Chair for the International Conference on Information Systems held in Arizona in 2009. Her research is published in the information systems and management journals and she works with several 'blue chip' companies on various research projects. She is currently working with the UK National Health Service and the Compliance Institute on ICT adoption and diffusion. She received a BSc from Kingston University and a PhD from Henley Brunel University.

Monica J. Garfield (mgarfield at bentley.edu, http://cis.bentley.edu/mgarfield/) is an Associate Professor in Computer Information Systems at Bentley College.  Prior to joining the faculty at Bentley College she was a faculty member of the IS/DS Department at the University of South Florida. Her research focuses on the socio-technical issues that impact telemedicine systems as well as the use of IT to enhance creativity.  Her work has appeared in such journals as Information System Research, MIS Quarterly, Communications of the ACM and Journal of Management Information Systems. She received her Ph.D. in MIS from the University of Georgia. She has a bachelor's degree in Cognitive Science from Vassar College, an MBA and a Masters of Science in MIS from Boston University. 

References

1. American Hospital Association (AHA) Report on the capital crisis: Impact on hospitals, 2009, available at http://www.aha.org/aha/content/2009/pdf/090122capitalcrisisreport.pdf

2. Blumenthal, D. Stimulating the adoption of health information technology. New England Journal of Medicine, 360, 15, (2009), 1477-1479.

3. Currie, W. and Finnegan, D. Integrating Healthcare with Information Communication Technology. Oxford: Radcliffe Publishing, 2009.

4. Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). EMR adoption model, 2010, http://www.himssanalytics.org/hc_providers/emr_adoption.asp

5. Institute of Medicine (IOM). To Err is Human. Building a Safer Health System,2000. http://www.nap.edu/books/0309068371/html/.

6. Kettinger, W. and Grover.V. Special section: Toward a theory of business process change management. Journal of Management Information Systems, 12, 1, (1995), 9-30.

7. Lorenzi, N., Novak, L., Weiss, J., Gadd, C., and Unertl, K. Crossing the implementation chasm: A proposal for bold action. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 15, 3, (2008), 290-296.

8. Ludwick, D.A. and J. Doucette. (2009) Adopting electronic medical records in primary care: Lessons learned from health information systems implementation experience in seven countries. International Journal of Medical Informatics, 78,1, (2009), 22-31.

9. Melão, N. & Pidd, M. A conceptual framework for understanding business processes and business process modeling. Information Systems Journal, 10, 2, (2000), 105-129.

10. Newell, S., Swan, J., and Galliers, R. A knowledge-focused perspective on the diffusion and adoption of complex information technologies: the BPR example. Information Systems Journal, 10,3, (2000), 239-259.

11. Obama, B. and Biden, J. Affordable health care for all Americans: The Obama-Biden plan. Journal of the American Medical Association, 300,16, (2008), 1927-1928. 

12. Organization for Co-Operation and Economic Development (OECD) Health Data 2009, http://www.oecd.org/document/16/0,3343,en_2649_34631_2085200_1_1_1_1,00.html

13. US Senate and Congress. American recovery and reinvestment act of 2009, http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestment_Act_of_2009/Division_A/Title_XIII

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