Exploring subscription renewal intention of operational cloud enterprise systems - a stakeholder perspective

Retaining customers is a relevant topic throughout all service industries. However, only limited attention has been directed towards studying the antecedents of subscription renewal in the context of operational cloud enterprise systems. Cloud services have historically been offered as subscription-based services with the (theoretical) possibility of seamless service cancellation, in contrast to classical IT-Outsourcing contracts or license-based software installations of on-premise enterprise systems. In this work, we investigate the central concept of subscription renewal by focusing on different facets of IS success and their relevance for distinct employee cohorts. Analyzing inter-cohort differences has strong practical implications, as it helps IT vendors to focus on specific IT-related factors when trying to retain customers. Therefore an empirical study was undertaken. The hypotheses were developed on an individual level and tested using survey responses of IT decision makers within companies which adopted cloud enterprise systems. Gathered data was then analyzed using PLS. The results show that subscription renewal intention of the strategic cohort is mainly based on perceived system quality, whereas information quality explains most of the variance of subscription renewal in the management cohort. Beneath the cloud enterprise systems specific contributions, the work adds to the theoretical body of research related to IS success and IS continuation, as well as stakeholder perspectives.

Pharmacokinetic studies of a Chinese triple herbal drug formula

Yin Chen Hao Tang preparation (YCHTP) is a classic traditional Chinese medicine formula, which is commonly used for clinical treatment of hepatological diseases. In this study, a rapid and validated high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method was developed to simultaneously identify 6,7-dimethylesculetin and geniposide in rat plasma. This assay was performed on a Dikma Diamonsil RP(18) column (200 mmx4.6 mm, 5 mum) with acetonitrile-methanol-water (0.1% formic acid) as the mobile phase, showing acceptable linearity, intra- and inter-day precision and accuracy (R.S.D.=5%), and absolute recovery for two analytes (74%); the limits of quantitation were 0.4 and 1.12 mug/ml, and the limits of detection were 0.06 and 0.09 mug/ml for two analytes. The developed method was successfully applied to study the effect of formula compatibility on the pharmacokinetics of 6,7-dimethylesculetin and geniposide in YCHTP when orally administrating an effective human daily dose of YCHTP to rats. We surmise that formula compatibility can significantly influence the pharmacokinetics of YCHTP, and we have elucidated and validated the compatible administration of YCHTP.

Patient Safety Law: From Silos to Systems

Patient safety has become a significant and pressing policy issue. Around the world, governments, the health care sector and the public are increasingly cognizant of the need to improve the safety of care delivered by their health systems. Pressure for change has been created by highly publicized incidents in a number of countries involving unsafe acts that were significant both in scale and consequence and a number of empirical studies that revealed the high rates of unsafe acts and their consequences. The costs of unsafe health care – both personal and fiscal – to individuals, their families and their communities and to the state are massive. In this research project we explored one particular avenue for change – that is, the use of legal instruments by governments to improve patient safety. We did this through a comparative review of the use of legal instruments or frameworks in other countries (specifically Australia, Denmark, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States) as well as two non-health care related sectors in Canada (transportation and occupational health and safety). We began this research by reviewing the legal instruments and undertaking extensive literature reviews. Further information was gathered through in-person interviews with policy-makers and academics in the countries studied, and from policy-makers and academics expert in the health, occupational health and safety, and transportation sectors in Canada. Once descriptions of the various countries and sectors were drafted, we held small-group meetings with local experts on particular aspects of patient safety. We then hosted a national consultation meeting. We subsequently drafted this final report and the appendices, which fully describe the results of the background research. Finally, we prepared a summary version of the report as well as posters and papers to be published and delivered at conferences and meetings with relevant groups.

Monitoring of complex systems of interacting dynamic systems

Increases in functionality, power and intelligence of modern engineered systems led to complex systems with a large number of interconnected dynamic subsystems. In such machines, faults in one subsystem can cascade and affect the behavior of numerous other subsystems. This complicates the traditional fault monitoring procedures because of the need to train models of the faults that the monitoring system needs to detect and recognize. Unavoidable design defects, quality variations and different usage patterns make it infeasible to foresee all possible faults, resulting in limited diagnostic coverage that can only deal with previously anticipated and modeled failures. This leads to missed detections and costly blind swapping of acceptable components because of one’s inability to accurately isolate the source of previously unseen anomalies. To circumvent these difficulties, a new paradigm for diagnostic systems is proposed and discussed in this paper. Its feasibility is demonstrated through application examples in automotive engine diagnostics.

Climate change adaptation in urban systems : strategies for planning regimes

Adaptation is increasingly being viewed as a necessary response tool in respect of climate change effects. Though the subject of significant scholarly and professional attention, adaptation still continues to lag behind mitigation in the climate change discourse. However, this situation looks likely to change over the coming years due to a increasing scientific acceptance that certain climate change effects are now inevitable. The purpose of this research is to illustrate, consider and demonstrate how urban planning regimes can use some of their professional tools to develop adaptation strategies and interventions in urban systems. These tools include plan-making, development management, urban design and place-making. Urban systems contribute disproportionately to climate change and will also likely suffer considerably from the resulting effects. Moreover, the majority of the world’s population is now urbanised, suggesting that adaptation will be crucial in order to develop urban systems that are resilient to climate change effects. Informed by a reflexive, qualitative methodology, this paper offers an informed understanding and illustration of adaptation as a climate change response, its use in urban systems and some of the roles and strategies that planning may take in developing and implementing urban adaptation. It concludes that urban planning regimes can have key roles in adapting urban systems to numerous climate change effects.

Accountable-eHealth systems : the next step forward for privacy

eHealth systems promise enviable benefits and capabilities for healthcare delivery. However, the technologies that make these capabilities possible introduce undesirable drawbacks such as information security related threats, which need to be appropriately addressed. Lurking in these threats are information privacy concerns. Addressing them has proven to be difficult because they often conflict with information access requirements of healthcare providers. Therefore, it is important to achieve an appropriate balance between these requirements. We contend that information accountability (IA) can achieve this balance. In this paper, we introduce accountable-eHealth (AeH) systems, which are eHealth systems that utilise IA as a measure of information privacy. We discuss how AeH system protocols can successfully achieve the aforementioned balance of requirements. As a means of implementation feasibility, we compare characteristics of AeH systems with Australia’s Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR) sys-tem and identify similarities and highlight the differences and the impact those differences would have to the eHealth domain.

Improving ecological performance of industrialized building systems in Malaysia

For construction stakeholders to fully embrace sustainability, its long-term benefits and associated risks need to be identified through holistic approaches. Consensus among key stakeholders is very important to the improvement of the ecological performance of industrialized building systems (IBS), a building construction method gaining momentum in Malaysia. A questionnaire survey examines the relative significance of 16 potentially important sustainability factors for IBS applications. To present possible solutions,semi-structured interviews solicit views from experienced IBS practitioners, representing the professions involved. Three most critical factors agreed by key stakeholders are material consumption, waste generation and waste disposal. Using SWOT analysis, the positive and negative aspects of these factors are investigated, with action plans formulated for IBS design practitioners. The SWOT analysis based guidelines have the potential to become part of IBS design briefing documents against which sustainability solutions are contemplated, selected and implemented. Existing knowledge on ecological performance issues is extended by considering the unique characteristics of IBS and identifying not only the benefits, but also the potential risks and challenges of pursuing sustainability. This is largely missing in previous research efforts. Findings to date focus on providing much-needed assistance to IBS designers, who are at the forefront of decision-making with a significant level of project influence. Ongoing work will be directed towards other project development phases and consider the inherent linkage between design decisions and subsequent sustainability deliverables in the project life cycle.

A simple test method for profiled steel cladding systems under wind uplift

A new simple test method using small scale models has been developed for testing profiled steel cladding systems under wind uplift/suction forces. This simple method should replace the large scale test method using two-span claddings used at present. It can be used for roof or wall cladding systems fastened with screw fasteners at crests or valleys.

Understanding requirements of novel healthcare information systems for management of advanced prostate cancer

Effective management of chronic diseases is a global health priority. A healthcare information system offers opportunities to address challenges of chronic disease management. However, the requirements of health information systems are often not well understood. The accuracy of requirements has a direct impact on the successful design and implementation of a health information system. Our research describes methods used to understand the requirements of health information systems for advanced prostate cancer management. The research conducted a survey to identify heterogeneous sources of clinical records. Our research showed that the General Practitioner was the common source of patient's clinical records (41%) followed by the Urologist (14%) and other clinicians (14%). Our research describes a method to identify diverse data sources and proposes a novel patient journey browser prototype that integrates disparate data sources.

User expertise in contemporary information systems : conceptualization, measurement and application

This research proposes a method for identifying user expertise in contemporary Information Systems (IS). It also proposes and develops a model for evaluating expertise. The aim of this study was to offer a common instrument that addresses the requirements of a contemporary Information System in a holistic way. This study demonstrates the application of the expertise construct in Information System evaluations, and shows that users of different expertise levels evaluate systems differently.

On effective accounting information systems in a dynamic business environment : the role of complementing capabilities

The global business environment is witnessing tough times, and this situation has significant implications on how organizations manage their processes and resources. Accounting information system (AIS) plays a critical role in this situation to ensure appropriate processing of financial transactions and availability to relevant information for decision-making. We suggest the need for a dynamic AIS environment for today’s turbulent business environment. This environment is possible with a dynamic AIS, complementary business intelligence systems, and technical human capability. Data collected through a field survey suggests that the dynamic AIS environment contributes to an organization’s accounting functions of processing transactions, providing information for decision making, and ensuring an appropriate control environment. These accounting processes contribute to the firm-level performance of the organization. From these outcomes, one can infer that a dynamic AIS environment contributes to organizational performance in today’s challenging business environment.

Design LED innovation to rejuvenate local food systems and healthy communities : an emerging research agenda

Food Sovereignty (food freedom) is about empowering people to develop their own local food system. Food Sovereignty challenges designers to enable people to innovate the local food system, rather than having a food system which is dictated by corporate interests and failed business ethics. Communities are realising the potential for design to assist in the innovation process, and add strategic value to potentially localise the food system. Design Led Innovation (DLI) offers a strategic framework to address large-scale cultural, systemic and economic changes. The DLI approach empowers communities to take organised action to achieve a healthy, prosperous and happy way of life. DLI can assist with business models in the business world and it is evident this approach can assist with creating social change too. This paper presents on an emerging research agenda aimed to assist designer’s focus from individuals and systems to communities and urban problems. This paper also presents the research proposition that DLI and service design coupled with social entrepreneurial ventures such as local food projects and creative community inventions, have the potential to enable social innovation for healthy and happy communities.

The 4C spectrum of fundamental behavioral relations for concurrent systems

The design of concurrent software systems, in particular process-aware information systems, involves behavioral modeling at various stages. Recently, approaches to behavioral analysis of such systems have been based on declarative abstractions defined as sets of behavioral relations. However, these relations are typically defined in an ad-hoc manner. In this paper, we address the lack of a systematic exploration of the fundamental relations that can be used to capture the behavior of concurrent systems, i.e., co-occurrence, conflict, causality, and concurrency. Besides the definition of the spectrum of behavioral relations, which we refer to as the 4C spectrum, we also show that our relations give rise to implication lattices. We further provide operationalizations of the proposed relations, starting by proposing techniques for computing relations in unlabeled systems, which are then lifted to become applicable in the context of labeled systems, i.e., systems in which state transitions have semantic annotations. Finally, we report on experimental results on efficiency of the proposed computations.

A basis for instrusion detection in distributed systems using kernel-level data tainting

This project was a step forward in developing intrusion detection systems in distributed environments such as web services. It investigates a new approach of detection based on so-called "taint-marking" techniques and introduces a theoretical framework along with its implementation in the Linux kernel.