Current National Approach to Healthcare ICT Standardization: Focus on Progress in New Zealand

Elaborating Models of eHealth Governance: Qualitative Systematic Review

BACKGROUND

Large-scale national eHealth policy programs have gained attention not only for benefits but also for several unintended consequences and failed expectations. Given the complex and mixed accounts of the results, questions have been raised on how large-scale digitalization programs are governed to reach health policy goals of quality improvement and equal access along with necessary digital transformations. In this qualitative systematic review, we investigate the following question: How is governance implemented and considered in the studies included in the qualitative review?

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study is to arrive at informed and recognizable conceptualizations and considerations of models of governance connected to eHealth, as presented and discussed in the scientific literature. In turn, we hope our results will help inform the discussion of how to govern such processes to obtain collectively negotiated objectives.

METHODS

A qualitative systematic review is a method for integrating or comparing with the findings from qualitative studies. It looks for "themes" or "constructs" that lie in or across individual qualitative studies. This type of review produces a narrative synthesis with thematic analysis and includes interpretive conceptual models. The goal is an interpretation and broadens the understanding of a particular phenomenon. We searched the PubMed database using predefined search terms and selected papers published from 2010 onwards. We specified the criteria for selection and quality assessment.

RESULTS

The search returned 220 papers. We selected 44 abstracts for full-text reading, and 11 papers were included for full-text synthesis. On the basis of the 11 papers, we constructed four governance models to categorize and conceptualize the findings. The models are political governance, normally depicting top-down processes; medical governance, which normally depicts bottom-up processes; the internet and global model, emphasizing international business strategies coupled with the internet; self-governance, which builds upon the development of the internet and Internet of Things, which has paved the way for personal governance and communication of one's own health data.

CONCLUSIONS

Collective negotiations between the nation-state and global policy actors, medical and self-governance actors, and global business and industry actors are essential. Technological affordances represent both positive and negative opportunities concerning the realization of health policy goals, and future studies should scrutinize this dynamic.

Will mHealth Revolutionize Health and Clinical Management and Open up New Horizons for Mental Health?

OBJECTIVES

To summarize recent research and emerging trends in the field of Health and Clinical management and propose a selection of best papers for year 2015.

METHODS

A literature review has been conducted by the two section editors and computerized provider order entry systems from bibliographic databases regards to health clinical management. As a result, a list of 15 candidate papers has been elaborated and a peer-reviewed has been performed by external reviewers. A consensus meeting has been organized between the two section editors and the editorial board to conclude the selection of the 3 best papers.

RESULTS

Starting with 1803 papers published in 2015, the full selection process ended with three papers from international peer-reviewed journals for the Health and Clinical Management section.

CONCLUSION

IoT and Cloudification have a direct impact on health and clinical management this year. Telepsychiatry benefits directly from this development and take advantages of the improvement of smart homes and of the generalization of mHealth solutions. Social networks are starting to be integrated as valuable source of information that are complementary to clinical data for reasoning-based solutions.

Potential use cases for the development of an electronic health facility registry in Nigeria: Key informant's perspectives

BACKGROUND

Master facility lists (MFL) maintain an important standard (unique identifier) in country health information systems that will aid integration and interoperability of multiple health facility based data sources. However, this standard is not readily available in several low and middle income countries where reliable data is most needed for efficient planning. The World Health Organization in 2012 drew up guidelines for the creation of MFLs in countries but this guideline still requires domestication and process modeling for each country adopting it. Nigeria in 2013 published a paper-based MFL directory which it hopes to migrate to an electronic MFL registry for use across the country.

OBJECTIVE

To identify the use cases of importance in the development of an electronic health facility registry to manage the MFL compiled in Nigeria.

METHODS

Potential use cases for the health facility registry were identified through consultations with key informants at the Federal Ministry of Health. These will serve as input into an electronic MFL registry development effort.

RESULTS

The use cases identified include: new health facility is created, update of status of health facility, close-out, relocation, new information available, delete and management of multi-branch health facility.

CONCLUSION

Development of an application for the management of MFLs requires proper architectural analysis of the manifestations that can befall a health facility through its lifecycle. A MFL electronic registry will be invaluable to manage health facility data and will aid the integration and interoperability of health facility information systems.