Effective utilization of business-to-business (B2B) electronic commerce (e-commerce) in hospitals may lead to many benefits such as increased accessibility to healthcare providers, improved process efficiency, enhanced quality of healthcare services, increased responses to changes, decreased scheduling conflicts, and reduction in administrative costs.However, many hospitals have found that they have not yet fully reaped the expected benefits from their B2B e-commerce investments.Despite this, there has not been much discussion in the literature with respect to the relationship between the organizational drivers on B2B e-commerce benefits for hospitals.Hence, a mixed-method of case study and survey was conducted to examine the relationships between B2B e-commerce benefits, IT evaluation resources allocation, IT investment evaluation methodologies, IT maturity, and user information requirements determination process.A B2B e-commerce evaluation management model was developed to test these relationships.The results provided empirical evidence in support of our proposed model and revealed that hospitals' IT evaluation resources allocation practices mediated the relationship of IT investment evaluation methodologies, IT maturity, and user information requirements determination process with B2B e-commerce benefits.The results also showed that the level of IT maturity had a significant impact on the adoption of IT investment evaluation methodologies.
Traditionally, little attention has been paid by hospitals to the key issues in the health information systems (HIS) outsourcing decision-making process. This is important given that the HIS outsourcing can play a key role in assisting hospitals in achieving its business objectives. However, the decision-making process of HIS outsourcing in hospitals is under-studied, especially in the management of their HIS outsourcing contracts. Therefore, the main objectives of this book chapter are to: (1) examine key issues surrounding the management and implementation of HIS outsourcing in Taiwanese hospitals; and (2) identify issues that are crucial in managing and implementing HIS outsourcing in hospitals. Four key issues and problems were identified in the HIS outsourcing process: lack of implementation in IS investment evaluation process, problems in managing HIS outsourcing contracts, lack of user involvement and participation in HIS outsourcing process, and failure to retain critical HIS contract management skills and project management capabilities in-house. Solutions and recommendations are provided to deal with key issues that are critical in the management and implementation of HIS outsourcing in hospitals.Request access from your librarian to read this chapter's full text.
In Australia, almost any ingredient is permitted in tobacco products,1 which is a situation aptly described by Dr Nigel Gray as ‘regulatory anarchy’.2
When smokers are informed that ingredients such as cocoa, coffee, peppermint, sugars and other sweeteners are added to most manufactured cigarettes3 and not just ‘niche’ flavoured varieties, many express amusement and surprise, or become shocked and angered.4 Most smokers have little or no notion that these seemingly harmless ingredients can play a deadly role by maximising addiction, increasing the palatability of cigarettes, reducing the smell of secondhand smoke and making it harder for smokers …
The prevalence of allergy and other common chronic diseases is higher in developed than developing countries, and higher in urban than rural regions. Urbanization through its modification of environmental microbiomes may play a predominant role in the development of these conditions. However, no studies have been conducted to compare the microbiome in house dust among areas with different urbanization levels.House dust from Xinxiang rural area (XR, n = 74), Xinxiang urban area (XU, n = 33), and Zhengzhou urban area (ZU, n = 32) in central China, and from Australia (AU, n = 58 [with pets AUP, n = 15, without pets AUNP, n = 43]) were collected during a summer season in China and Australia. High-throughput sequencing of 16S rDNA was employed to profile house dust bacterial communities.Settled dust collected in China was dominant with 2 bacterial phyla: Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria, while floor dust collected in Australia had a higher proportion of phylum Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, and Actinobacteria. XR dust samples presented higher bacterial richness and diversity compared with XU or ZU samples. Urbanization level (r2 = 0.741 P < 0.001) had a significant correlation with the distribution of house dust bacterial community. At the genus level, there was a positive correlation (r coefficient > 0.5) between urbanization level and bacterial genera Streptococcus, Bartonella, Staphylococcus, Pseudomonas, Acinetobacter, Bacteroides, Corynebacterium_1,and Enhydrobacter and a negative correlation (r coefficient < -0.5) with Rhodanobacter.There was a significant difference in house dust microbiota among different urbanization areas. The areas with a lower urbanization level presented higher dust-borne bacterial richness and diversity. Modern urbanization has a significant influence on the bacterial microbiome profiles of indoor dust.
The objective of this study was to assess the impact on young people of three tobacco industry (TI) advertisements previously screened on MTV Europe and in cinemas in Australia. The three ads were exposed to 14–18-year-old smokers and non-smokers using commercial advertising copy-testing techniques. The primary dependent variable for both smokers and non-smokers was the advertisement's ability to increase feelings of not wanting to smoke in the future, and, for smokers, the extent to which the ad made current smokers think they should try to stop smoking. The results for the TI ads were compared with copy testing data for youth-targeted Western Australian tobacco control (TC) ads. The TI ads performed as well or better than some TC ads, but not as well as other TC ads suggesting that attacks on the tobacco industry for airing smoking prevention ads cannot always use these ads' ineffectiveness as an argument for their removal. However, these tobacco industry ads may increase positive (or lessen negative) attitudes toward the tobacco industry, which could further the industry's aims of increased support or less criticism from community groups. It may be that this is the more important reason for advocates to call for such ads to be withdrawn.