Support Systems Research Research Articles

Implementation of Consolidated HIS: Improving Quality and Efficiency of Healthcare

ObjectivesAdoption of hospital information systems offers distinctive advantages in healthcare delivery. First, implementation of consolidated hospital information system in Seoul National University Hospital led to significant improvements in quality of healthcare and efficiency of hospital management.MethodsThe hospital information system in Seoul National University Hospital consists of component applications: clinical information systems, clinical research support systems, administrative information systems, management information systems, education support systems, and referral systems that operate to generate utmost performance when delivering healthcare services.ResultsClinical information systems, which consist of such applications as electronic medical records, picture archiving and communication systems, primarily support clinical activities. Clinical research support system provides valuable resources supporting various aspects of clinical activities, ranging from management of clinical laboratory tests to establishing care-giving procedures.ConclusionsSeoul National University Hospital strives to move its hospital information system to a whole new level, which enables customized healthcare service and fulfills individual requirements. The current information strategy is being formulated as an initial step of development, promoting the establishment of next-generation hospital information system.

Applying a belief rule‐base inference methodology to a guideline‐based clinical decision support system

Abstract: A critical issue in the clinical decision support system (CDSS) research area is how to represent and reason with both uncertain medical domain knowledge and clinical symptoms to arrive at accurate conclusions. Although a number of methods and tools have been developed in the past two decades for modelling clinical guidelines, few of those modelling methods have capabilities of handling the uncertainties that exist in almost every stage of a clinical decision‐making process. This paper describes how to apply a recently developed generic rule‐base inference methodology using the evidential reasoning approach (RIMER) to model clinical guidelines and the clinical inference process in a CDSS. In RIMER, a rule base is designed with belief degrees embedded in all possible consequents of a rule. Such a rule base is capable of capturing vagueness, incompleteness and non‐linear causal relationships, while traditional IF–THEN rules can be represented as a special case. Inference in such a rule base is implemented using the evidential reasoning approach which has the capability of handling different types and degrees of uncertainty in both medical domain knowledge and clinical symptoms. A case study demonstrates that employing RIMER in developing a guideline‐based CDSS is a valid novel approach.

Canadian advanced life support capacities and future directions

Canada began research on space-relevant biological life support systems in the early 1990s. Since that time Canadian capabilities have grown tremendously, placing Canada among the emerging leaders in biological life support systems. The rapid growth of Canadian expertise has been the result of several factors including a large and technically sophisticated greenhouse sector which successfully operates under challenging climatic conditions, well planned technology transfer strategies between the academic and industrial sectors, and a strong emphasis on international research collaborations. Recent activities such as Canada’s contribution of the Higher Plant Compartment of the European Space Agency’s MELiSSA Pilot Plant and the remote operation of the Arthur Clarke Mars Greenhouse in the Canadian High Arctic continue to demonstrate Canadian capabilities with direct applicability to advanced life support systems. There is also a significant latent potential within Canadian institutions and organizations with respect to directly applicable advanced life support technologies. These directly applicable research interests include such areas as horticultural management strategies (for candidate crops), growth media, food processing, water management, atmosphere management, energy management, waste management, imaging, environment sensors, thermal control, lighting systems, robotics, command and data handling, communications systems, structures, in-situ resource utilization, space analogues and mission operations. With this background and in collaboration with the Canadian aerospace industry sector, a roadmap for future life support contributions is presented here. This roadmap targets an objective of at least 50% food closure by 2050 (providing greater closure in oxygen, water recycling and carbon dioxide uptake). The Canadian advanced life support community has chosen to focus on lunar surface infrastructure and not low Earth orbit or transit systems (i.e. microgravity applications). To advance the technical readiness for the proposed lunar missions, including a lunar plant growth lander, lunar “salad machine” (i.e. small scale plant production unit) and a full scale lunar plant production system, a suite of terrestrial developments and analogue systems are proposed. As has been successfully demonstrated by past Canadian advanced life support activities, terrestrial technology transfer and the development of highly qualified personnel will serve as key outputs for Canadian advanced life support system research programs. This approach is designed to serve the Canadian greenhouse industry by developing compliance measures for mitigating environmental impact, reducing labour and energy costs as well as improving Canadian food security, safety and benefit northern/remote communities.

An Agent-Based Collaborative Approach to Graphing Causal Maps for Situation Formulation

We provide a background discussion of group support systems (GSS) research into aiding strategic management processes. GSS support for strategic management has been primarily focused on qualitative analysis and the communication processes surrounding strategic planning. While fully developed in common decision-support systems, powerful simulation modeling and quantitative analytical tools have been difficult to integrate into GSS system configurations because they require increased cognitive load and expert modeling support, a central problem now addressed by collaboration engineering. A conceptual and functional bridge is needed to integrate the qualitative and quantitative approaches, reduce cognitive load, and provide modeling support that does not require experts. Acar’s analytical causal mapping is introduced as a structured method for situational formulation and analysis of unstructured strategic problems. This form of causal mapping includes specific processes and analytical approaches offering cognitive modeling support for problem formulation. Its computational capabilities provide support for Systems Thinking approaches in a system easy to learn and use. Using the methodological template of the design science paradigm, we contribute a prototype system for the development and simulation of causal maps that uses RePast 2.0, a Java agent-based modeling (ABM) and simulation library.

Ewolucja przemysłu zaawansowanej technologii i sektora teleinformatycznego (ICT) w Finlandii

The paper presents in a broad outline the main characteristics of the evolution of the Finnish high-tech industry and ICT sector within the context of general changes in industry and the national economy. In the last decades of the 20th century Finland dynamically developed a knowledge-based economy and became one of the leaders of the information society. A spectacular manifestation of this is the position of the country in global competitiveness rankings, where Finland has occupied a top position for several years, sometimes even being ahead of the United States. The so-called ‘Finnish model of information society’ is characterised, among others, by a significant growth in knowledge-intensive industries and a complex system of research and development support. However, all those changes were dependent on the previous development path of the country. The structure of Finnish industry was rather one-sided until the 1980s, when knowledge- and expertise-intensive production started to catch up with the level of manufacturing dominated by raw materials, capital and energy. For a long time, Finland specialised in the forest industry and in the processing of metals. A new sector that has developed during the past decades is electronics and, especially, the manufacturing of communication devices. Furthermore, the economy has changed more dramatically in Finland than in any other developed country over the same period of time. Industries have become technology-intensive and production is strongly characterised by specialisation. Finland has become the most specialised country in information and communication technology in the world, and this specialisation trend is continuing. The forest industry and other traditional industries rely more and more on the new technologies and state-of-the-art knowledge. In Finland, industrialisation started later than in other countries, but it was very rapid. Industrial production and exports grew faster than the rest of the economy in the 1990s, and the structure of exports diversified. Unlike other developed countries, Finland “re-industrialised” in the 1990s. The contribution of industry to the total volume of production and employment has been higher in Finland than in other advanced economies in the past couple of years.

Research use and support needs, and research activity in social care: a cross-sectional survey in two councils with social services responsibilities in the UK

The purpose of this study was to investigate the level of research activity, research use, research interests and research skills in the social care workforce in two UK councils with social service responsibilities (CSSRs). A cross-sectional survey was conducted of the social care workforce in two CSSRs (n = 1512) in 2005. The sample was identified in partnership with the councils, and included employees with professional qualifications (social workers and occupational therapists); staff who have a role to assess, plan and monitor care; service managers; commissioners of services; and those involved with social care policy, information management and training. The survey achieved a response rate of 24% (n = 368). The Internet was reported as an effective source of research information; conversely, research-based guidelines were reported to have a low impact on practice. Significant differences were found in research use, by work location, and postgraduate training. Most respondents saw research as useful for practice (69%), and wanted to collaborate in research (68%), but only 11% were planning to do research within the next 12 months. Having a master's degree was associated with a greater desire to lead or collaborate in research. A range of research training needs, and the preferred modes of delivery were identified. Support to increase research activity includes protected time and mentorship. The study concludes that a range of mechanisms to make research available for the social care workforce needs to be in place to support evidence-informed practice. Continual professional development to a postgraduate level supports the use and production of evidence in the social care workforce, and promotes the development of a research culture. The term research is used to include service user consultations, needs assessment and service evaluation. The findings highlight a relatively large body of the social care workforce willing to collaborate and conduct research. Councils and research support systems need to be developed to utilise this relatively untapped potential.

New horizons at the core of information systems: decision support system advances

Here, we argue that decision support systems (DSSs) research is a core area of the information systems (IS) discipline, being one of six major expansions that have occurred in the IS field. Interestingly, DSS research is often blended with some other expansions experienced by the IS field: namely, organizational computing, electronic commerce/business, and pervasive computing. The DSS core of IS research continues to grow along ever-widening horizons. Diverse exemplars of such DSS advances are found in the papers of this special issue.

An Introduction to Web-based Support Systems

We view Web-based Support Systems (WSS) as a multidisciplinary research area that focuses on supporting human activities in specific domains or fields based on computer science, information technology, and Web technology. Research on WSS is motivated by the challenges and opportunities of the Internet and the Web. The recent advancements of computer and Web technologies make the implementation of WSS feasible. This paper presents the fundamental issues of WSS, a framework of WSS, and research on WSS. We also present preliminary studies on two examples of WSS, Web-based research support systems (WRSS) and Web-based information retrieval support systems (WIRSS).

Electronic support for knowledge creation in a research institute

This paper focuses on the question how to build an electronic support environment for knowledge creation in a research institute (JAIST). In order to assess the importance of diverse conditions of scientific creativity, we performed a survey in JAIST, and extracted useful knowledge from the database of survey results. Following the analysis of the theory of academic processes of knowledge creation and the survey findings in JAIST, a computer-based integrated system is proposed. In the aspect of the system design, we postulate that an electronic support environment for academic creativity can be achieved through a seamless integration with Internet, Application Server, Middle Ware, Database and Data Warehouse. The paper addresses issues of knowledge representation in the Electronic Support System for academic research, testing and evaluation issues and conclusions.

Internet Research Support System: An Application for Immediate Feedback in Authentic Internet Research

A prototype Internet Research Support System is presented based on earlier work on the modeling of online reading behavior and evaluating the reading process and its outcomes. Users complete a reading task by browsing the Web and writing a short essay. The online browsing data is captured in real-time, which, along with the essay, reflects the participants’ online reading process. Verbatim Quotient Detection is possible which monitors the proportion of material copied from the Internet. A Latent Semantic Analysis component to evaluate sentence-to-sentence cohesion in the final essay is also described, and is in the process of being integrated with the main system. The system evaluation capabilities provide the participants with immediate feedback that is specific to their final essay in order to help them increase their online reading comprehension. It also archives data for research and evaluation purposes. One hundred and seventeen undergraduate students and one faculty member participated in two experiments to test the system where the outcomes were marked by the system and human markers. Analysis of the online reading activity demonstrated a negative correlation between the human marker’s score and the number of verbatim words in the final essay. Furthermore, the analysis showed that when the whole Internet was available, even with limited time and a common task, there was significant variation in participants’ search strategies, search terms and research processes.

CODIRO: A New System for Obtaining Data Concerning Consumer Behavior Based on Data Factors of High Interest Determined by the Analyst

The aim of this paper is to propose a new system for the strategic use of customer data that includes and integrates such differing data sources as company databases, mobile telephone networks and Internet data and is a consumer research support system for the discovery of new marketing opportunities. This system, called CODIRO, will be discussed in this paper using a case study of the effects on sales of processed food product television commercials. A system for verifying the validity of consumer behavior models will also be described and discussed. Use of the CODIRO analysis system makes it easy to introduce, into the analytic model, consumer attitude changes and in-store data of many types that have not been used to measure advertising and promotional activity effectiveness in the past.

K42

K42 is an open-source scalable research operating system well suited to support systems research. The primary goals of K42's design that support such research include flexibility to allow a multitude of policies and implementations to be supported simultaneously, extensibility to allow new policies and implementations to be readily added, and scalability to enable good performance for both small and large applications on both small and large multiprocessor systems. The goals are accomplished via key features including an object-oriented structure that allows specialized resource management implementations and policies on a per-resource, per-application basis, implementation in user-level servers of much of the system functionality, and a sophisticated set of underlying services that provides a programming model for developing system software in a scalable and modular fashion.These characteristics make K42 an attractive framework for prototyping new operating system ideas. In addition, K42 has a sophisticated performance monitoring infrastructure allowing a thorough understanding of new ideas to be gained. The above framework combined with a consistent emphasis on scalability makes K42 well suited for high-end computing initiatives. In this paper, we describe the structure of K42 which contributes to the advantageous prototyping environment, and demonstrate how to utilize it by describing ongoing research efforts.

A decision support system for lower back pain diagnosis: Uncertainty management and clinical evaluations

Lower back pain (LBP) is a common medical problem that deprives many individuals of their normal lifestyles and keeps them from routine activities. Diagnosing LBP is challenging because it requires highly specialized knowledge involving a complex anatomical and physiological structure as well as diverse clinical considerations. Although a handful of studies have proposed or developed systems to support LBP diagnosis and improve knowledge sharing, these systems have limited scope, lack systematic evaluations, and/or ignore diagnoses that consist of multiple parts (i.e., decision outcomes), each of which corresponds to a particular medical condition, disease, or abnormality. In this study, we design, implement, and evaluate a Web-based decision support system that employs an intuitive and easy-to-use framework to assess the patient's information and recommend a diagnosis consisting of one or multiple parts. Our system design addresses the challenging characteristics of a LBP diagnosis and uses verbal probability estimation to represent and reason about the associated uncertainty. Our evaluations are systematic, including knowledge base verification, system validation using a modified Turing test, and clinical efficacy assessment involving 5 clinicians and 180 real-world cases collected from geographically dispersed clinics. Our evaluation design is more thorough than those used by most previous studies, and the proposed system is relatively ready for clinical deployment. Therefore, this study both contributes to decision support systems research and has advanced clinical support for LBP diagnosis. In light of some of the limitations of this study, we also identify and discuss several areas that need continued investigation.

Maintenance quality policy statement: its research, design and executive support system

After the evolution of the ISO 9000 series standards, organisations began to nourish the power of policy statements in achieving quality strategies. However, there are many fields in which policy statements are yet to be exploited. Maintenance quality engineering is one of them. This paper reports a research project which has been undertaken to overcome this deficiency existing in both contemporary research and practice. During this research project, a methodology for developing a maintenance quality policy statement has been designed. Since this methodology requires the support and commitment of top executives, an Executive Support System (ESS) has been developed. The validation of this ESS has been checked by demonstrating it to the executives of two Indian companies and obtaining their feedback. In concluding, this paper finds that wider dissemination of the importance of a maintenance quality policy statement among maintenance engineering professionals is the need of the hour.

Development Environment for Automatic Generation of Clinical Data Acquisition System

This paper discusses the development environment that automatically generates software intended to execute arbitrarily defined functions. Software that we develop can be regarded as a kind of development environment or development platform, and its purpose is the automatic generation of the clinical data acquisition system that supports arbitrary clinical researches. Methods: Basically, the clinical data acquisition system consists of the interface, the data storage and the clinical research protocols. Our development environment generates these components automatically according to the ontology written by the end user, e.g. a clinical researcher. A clinical data acquisition system is then generated. Results: Our development environment consists of the interface generation module, the database generation module, the temporary data storage generation module for CDA (clinical document architecture), and the ontologies. Ontology is a method of expressing structured information and can be regarded as a knowledge base serialized by XML format. These ontologies are constructed by domain experts who want a clinical research support system. Ontology describes clinical data items, the interface design and the database schema of a clinical data acquisition system. The development environment parses these ontologies and secures the information on how to generate a clinical data acquisition system. Conclusion: This study can be utilized to develop the clinical data acquisition system in oriental medicine.

Development of SOVAT: A numerical–spatial decision support system for community health assessment research

Introduction The development of numerical–spatial routines is frequently required to solve complex community health problems. Community health assessment (CHA) professionals who use information technology need a complete system that is capable of supporting the development of numerical–spatial routines. Background Currently, there is no decision support system (DSS) that is effectively able to accomplish this task as the majority of public health geospatial information systems (GIS) are based on traditional (relational) database architecture. On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) is a multidimensional data warehouse technique that is commonly used as a decision support system in standard industry. OLAP alone is not sufficient for solving numerical–spatial problems that frequently occur in CHA research. Coupling it with GIS technology offers the potential for a very powerful and useful system. Methodology A community health OLAP cube was created by integrating health and population data from various sources. OLAP and GIS technologies were then combined to develop the Spatial OLAP Visualization and Analysis Tool (SOVAT). Results The synergy of numerical and spatial environments within SOVAT is shown through an elaborate and easy-to-use drag and drop and direct manipulation graphical user interface (GUI). Community health problem-solving examples (routines) using SOVAT are shown through a series of screen shots. Discussion The impact of the difference between SOVAT and existing GIS public health applications can be seen by considering the numerical–spatial problem-solving examples. These examples are facilitated using OLAP–GIS functions. These functions can be mimicked in existing GIS public applications, but their performance and system response would be significantly worse since GIS is based on traditional (relational) backend. Conclusion OLAP–GIS system offer great potential for powerful numerical–spatial decision support in community health analysis. The functionality of an OLAP–GIS system has been shown through a series of example community health numerical–spatial problems. Efforts are now focused on determining its usability during human–computer interaction (HCI). Later work will focus on performing summative evaluations comparing SOVAT to existing decision support tools used during community health assessment research.

SHARING DRUG DATA

WILLIAM GIBSON, THE SCIence fiction writer, once wrote that the future is already here— it just isn't very evenly distributed yet. This is the kind of idea that information technology (IT) companies readily embrace. Mike Svinte, vice president for marketing and business development at IBM Life Sciences, says he likes Gibson's notion because it suggests a handful of isolated IT trendsetters whose efforts give us a window onto the future of the state of the art. He points to IBM clients, such as the Mayo Clinic and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, that are forging the kind of collaborative research support systems that he says will underpin drug discovery in the era of personalized medicine—the genomicsdriven effort to target medications to specific populations or even individual patients. But if the future of IT for drug and health care organizations is unevenly distributed, the information that needs to be harnessed, vetted, and ...

대학도서관의연구지원 시스템 연구

This research aims to explore faculty research support systems in university libraries, assess their service performance for faculty research, and suggest the need and roadmap for new service development. We perform in-depth analyses of not only the current university library evaluation criteria as part of the overall university evaluation criteria, but also ten university libraries in the United States and two university libraries in Korea. Thorough benchmarking studies reveal the problems of the current university library evaluation criteria in its advances and limitations of current faculty support service systems. Especially this research suggests to develop a one-stop service execution wheel for the roadmap for the faculty research support system which is based on customer relationship management(CRM) for one-to-one, mass-personalized services to the faculty.

A Critical Analysis of Decision Support Systems Research

This paper critically analyses the nature and state of decision support systems (DSS) research. To provide context for the analysis, a history of DSS is presented which focuses on the evolution of a number of sub-groupings of research and practice: personal DSS, group support systems, negotiation support systems, intelligent DSS, knowledge management-based DSS, executive information systems/business intelligence, and data warehousing. To understand the state of DSS research an empirical investigation of published DSS research is presented. This investigation is based on the detailed analysis of 1,020 DSS articles published in 14 major journals from 1990 to 2003. The analysis found that DSS publication has been falling steadily since its peak in 1994 and the current publication rate is at early 1990s levels. Other findings include that personal DSS and group support systems dominate research activity and data warehousing is the least published type of DSS. The journal DSS is the major publishing outlet; US ‘Other’ journals dominate DSS publishing and there is very low exposure of DSS in European journals. Around two-thirds of DSS research is empirical, a much higher proportion than general IS research. DSS empirical research is overwhelming positivist, and is more dominated by positivism than IS research in general. Design science is a major DSS research category. The decision support focus of the sample shows a well-balanced mix of development, technology, process, and outcome studies. Almost half of DSS papers did not use judgement and decision-making reference research in the design and analysis of their projects and most cited reference works are relatively old. A major omission in DSS scholarship is the poor identification of the clients and users of the various DSS applications that are the focus of investigation. The analysis of the professional or practical contribution of DSS research shows a field that is facing a crisis of relevance. Using the history and empirical study as a foundation, a number of strategies for improving DSS research are suggested.

A Descriptive Analysis of Decision Support Systems Research Between 1990 and 2003

This paper is the first major report of a project that is investigating the theoretic foundations of decision support systems (DSS). The project was principally motivated by a concern for the direction and relevance of DSS research. The main areas of research focus are the decision and judgement theoretic base of the discipline, the research strategies used in published articles, and the professional relevance of DSS research. The project has analysed 926 DSS articles published in 14 major journals from 1990 to 2003. The findings indicate that DSS research is more dominated by positivist research than general information systems (in particular experiments, surveys, and descriptions of specific applications and systems), is heavily influenced by the work of Herbert Simon, is poorly grounded in contemporary judgement and decision-making research, and falls down in the identification of the nature of clients and users. Of great concern is the finding that DSS research has relatively low professional relevance. An overview of the direction of further analysis is presented.