Developing a collaboration framework for global health events using technology

Abstract

Global spreads of epidemics present new opportunities for collaboration because an unprecedented public health event involves various people and organisations. With such a complexity, a system for managing an epidemic outbreak would call for the understanding of related processes and operations before individuals or organisations could collaborate with each other based on their information, knowledge or expertise. However, this much-needed integration for collaboration is lacking in previous research. Hence, based on coordination theory, this research investigated required collaborations across organisations under a public health event. The research unveiled its characteristics by analysing the nature of a pandemic, and captured its complexity by identifying and structuring necessary constituents. It is articulated how such a collaboration can be structured on a conceptual level into a sense-and-respond framework, and operated to satisfy needed responses, thereby facilitating at-stake organisations by better managing public health events. In particular, technology's usage advantage inspired by the framework collaboration are delineated. Additionally, aspects of governance and project management are portrayed, and a case regarding various scenarios of how technologies can be potentially used in line with or integrated in the framework components is elaborated.