Information architecture for healthcare organizations: the case of a NHS Hospital in UK

Healthcare organizations are known for their complex and intense information environment. Healthcare information is facilitated via heterogeneous information systems or paper-based sources. Access to the right information under increasing time pressure is extremely challenging. This paper proposes an information architecture for healthcare organizations. It facilitates the provision of the right information to the right person in the right place and time tailored to their requirements. It adapts an abductive reasoning research approach. Organizational semiotics serves as its theoretical underpinning, guiding the data collection process through direct observation in the ophthalmology outpatient clinics of a UK hospital. It results the norm and information objects that form the information architecture. This is modeled by Archimate. The contribution of the information architecture can be seen from organizational, social and technical perspective. It clearly shows how information is facilitated within a healthcare organization, reducing duplicated data entry, and guiding the future technological implementation.

Semiotic interoperability- a critical step towards systems integration

Information systems integration becomes critical in enhancing organisational competitiveness through effective use of information resource provided by the whole host of information systems. Information systems integration in its nature is a process of bringing about the capability of communication and information exchange between systems; while interoperability, often as the result of systems integration, is such a capability. However currently there is a lack of theoretical foundation for representation and measure of the interoperability in organisations. Organisational semiotics provides a theoretical foundation for systems interoperability. A notion of ‘semiotic interoperability’ is proposed in this paper as a paradigm, guiding systems integration and measuring degree of interoperability, covering aspects from physical properties, transmission structure of signs, placing emphasis on communicating meaning, intention to social consequence of information.

Information sources, ICTs and price information in rural agricultural markets

The spread and rapid uptake of mobile telephony in Sub-Saharan Africa has highlighted the potential role of Information Communication Technologies in improving market participation and welfare outcomes for farm producers in agricultural produce markets. This article explores the influence of different sources of information and transmission technologies on the quantum and reliability of market information flowing to farm producers, based on a survey of farm households in northern Ghana. Our results suggest that the principal role of radio broadcasts and mobile telephony is in providing a broader knowledge of markets by enhancing the quantum of market information flowing to farm producers. They do not, however, appear to have a significant impact on the quality/reliability of price information obtained by farmers for making marketing decisions. Information sources appear to be the chief determinant of the reliability of price information, with price information obtained from extension agents being the most credible. Our results provide some useful insights for the design and implementation of Market Information Systems aimed at encouraging market participation by rural farm producers in agricultural markets.

An approach to develop flexible systems with organizational-interoperability requirements

Flexibility of information systems (IS) have been studied to improve the adaption in support of the business agility as the set of capabilities to compete more effectively and adapt to rapid changes in market conditions (Glossary of business agility terms, 2003). However, most of work on IS flexibility has been limited to systems architecture, ignoring the analysis of interoperability as a part of flexibility from the requirements. This paper reports a PhD project, which proposes an approach to develop IS with flexibility features, considering some challenges of flexibility in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) such as the lack of interoperability and the agility of their business. The motivation of this research are the high prices of IS in developing countries and the usefulness of organizational semiotics to support the analysis of requirements for IS. (Liu, 2005).

Design of a unified data with business rules storage model for OLTP and OLAP systems

This paper reviews the literature concerning the practice of using Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) systems to recall information stored by Online Transactional Processing (OLTP) systems. Such a review provides a basis for discussion on the need for the information that are recalled through OLAP systems to maintain the contexts of transactions with the data captured by the respective OLTP system. The paper observes an industry trend involving the use of OLTP systems to process information into data, which are then stored in databases without the business rules that were used to process information and data stored in OLTP databases without associated business rules. This includes the necessitation of a practice, whereby, sets of business rules are used to extract, cleanse, transform and load data from disparate OLTP systems into OLAP databases to support the requirements for complex reporting and analytics. These sets of business rules are usually not the same as business rules used to capture data in particular OLTP systems. The paper argues that, differences between the business rules used to interpret these same data sets, risk gaps in semantics between information captured by OLTP systems and information recalled through OLAP systems. Literature concerning the modeling of business transaction information as facts with context as part of the modelling of information systems were reviewed to identify design trends that are contributing to the design quality of OLTP and OLAP systems. The paper then argues that; the quality of OLTP and OLAP systems design has a critical dependency on the capture of facts with associated context, encoding facts with contexts into data with business rules, storage and sourcing of data with business rules, decoding data with business rules into the facts with the context and recall of facts with associated contexts. The paper proposes UBIRQ, a design model to aid the co-design of data with business rules storage for OLTP and OLAP purposes. The proposed design model provides the opportunity for the implementation and use of multi-purpose databases, and business rules stores for OLTP and OLAP systems. Such implementations would enable the use of OLTP systems to record and store data with executions of business rules, which will allow for the use of OLTP and OLAP systems to query data with business rules used to capture the data. Thereby ensuring information recalled via OLAP systems preserves the contexts of transactions as per the data captured by the respective OLTP system.

Formal validation of automated policy refinement in the management of network security systems

Policy hierarchies and automated policy refinement are powerful approaches to simplify administration of security services in complex network environments. A crucial issue for the practical use of these approaches is to ensure the validity of the policy hierarchy, i.e. since the policy sets for the lower levels are automatically derived from the abstract policies (defined by the modeller), we must be sure that the derived policies uphold the high-level ones. This paper builds upon previous work on Model-based Management, particularly on the Diagram of Abstract Subsystems approach, and goes further to propose a formal validation approach for the policy hierarchies yielded by the automated policy refinement process. We establish general validation conditions for a multi-layered policy model, i.e. necessary and sufficient conditions that a policy hierarchy must satisfy so that the lower-level policy sets are valid refinements of the higher-level policies according to the criteria of consistency and completeness. Relying upon the validation conditions and upon axioms about the model representativeness, two theorems are proved to ensure compliance between the resulting system behaviour and the abstract policies that are modelled.

Volunteered Geographic Information For Water Management: A Prototype Architecture

Driven by Web 2.0 technology and the almost ubiquitous presence of mobile devices, Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) is knowing an unprecedented growth. These notable technological advancements have opened fruitful perspectives also in the field of water management and protection, raising the demand for a reconsideration of policies which also takes into account the emerging trend of VGI. This research investigates the opportunity of leveraging such technology to involve citizens equipped with common mobile devices (e.g. tablets and smartphones) in a campaign of report of water-related phenomena. The work is carried out in collaboration with ADBPO - Autorità di bacino del fiume Po (Po river basin Authority), i.e. the entity responsible for the environmental planning and protection of the basin of river Po. This is the longest Italian river, spreading over eight among the twenty Italian Regions and characterized by complex environmental issues. To enrich ADBPO official database with user-generated contents, a FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) architecture was designed which allows not only user field-data collection, but also data Web publication through standard protocols. Open Data Kit suite allows users to collect georeferenced multimedia information using mobile devices equipped with location sensors (e.g. the GPS). Users can report a number of environmental emergencies, problems or simple points of interest related to the Po river basin, taking pictures of them and providing other contextual information. Field-registered data is sent to a server and stored into a PostgreSQL database with PostGIS spatial extension. GeoServer provides then data dissemination on the Web, while specific OpenLayers-based viewers were built to optimize data access on both desktop computers and mobile devices. Besides proving the suitability of FOSS in the frame of VGI, the system represents a successful prototype for the exploitation of user local, real-time information aimed at managing and protecting water resources.

Um modelo de EIS - enterprise information system - que identifica características para comportamentos proativos na recuperação de informações

Este documento constitui uma dissertação de mestrado, requisito parcial para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Administração pela Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. O tema da pesquisa é o relacionamento existente entre as características técnicas de um projeto de sistema de informação e apoio à decisão e os comportamentos dos usuários no seu uso. O objetivo é desenvolver e apresentar um modelo conceitual de EIS (“Enterprise Information Systems”), a partir da literatura, das tendências tecnológicas e de estudos de caso, que identifique características para comportamentos proativos dos usuários na recuperação de informações. Adotou-se o conceito de comportamento proativo na recuperação de informações como a combinação das categorias exploração de dados e busca focada. Entre os principais resultados, pode-se destacar a definição de categorias relacionadas com as características dos sistemas - flexibilidade, integração e apresentação - e de categorias relacionadas com os comportamentos dos usuários na recuperação de informações - exploração de dados e busca focada, bem como a apresentação de um modelo conceitual para sistemas EIS. Pode-se destacar também a exploração de novas técnicas para análise qualitativa de dados, realizada com o objetivo de buscar uma maior preservação do contexto nos estudos de caso.

Stage level measurement of information and communication technology in organizations

Na moderna Economia do Conhecimento, na Era do Big Data, entender corretamente o uso e a gestão da Tecnologia de Informação e Comunicação (TIC) tendo como base o campo acadêmico de estudos de Sistemas de Informação (SI), torna-se cada vez mais relevante e estratégico para as organizações que pretendem: permanecer em atividade, estar aptas para atender novas demandas (internas e externas) e enfrentar as complexas mudanças na competição de mercado. Esta pesquisa utiliza a teoria dos estágios de crescimento, fundamentada pelos estudos de Richard L. Nolan nos anos 70. A literatura acadêmica relacionada com modelos de estágios de crescimento e o contexto do campo de estudo de SI, fornecem as bases conceituais deste estudo. A pesquisa identifica um modelo com seus construtos relacionados aos estágios de crescimento das iniciativas da TIC/SI organizacional, partindo das variáveis de benchmark de segundo nível de Nolan, e propõe sua operacionalização com a criação e desenvolvimento de uma escala. De caráter exploratório e descritivo, a pesquisa traz contribuição teórica ao paradigma da teoria dos estágios de crescimento, adicionando um novo processo de crescimento em sua estrutura conceitual. Como resultado, é disponibilizado além de um instrumento de escala bilíngue (português e inglês), recomendações e regras para aplicação de um instrumento de pesquisa do tipo survey, na continuidade deste estudo. Como implicação geral desta pesquisa, é esperado que seu uso e aplicação ao mensurar a avaliação do nível de estágio da TIC/SI em organizações, possam auxiliar dois perfis de indivíduos: acadêmicos que estudam essa temática, assim como, profissionais que buscam respostas de suas ações práticas nas organizações onde trabalham.

Data information system to promote the organization data of collections - modeling considerations by the Unified Modelign Language (UML)

Pode-se afirmar que a evolução tecnológica (desenvolvimento de novos instrumentos de medição como, softwares, satélites e computadores, bem como, o barateamento das mídias de armazenamento) permite às Organizações produzirem e adquirirem grande quantidade de dados em curto espaço de tempo. Devido ao volume de dados, Organizações de pesquisa se tornam potencialmente vulneráveis aos impactos da explosão de informações. Uma solução adotada por algumas Organizações é a utilização de ferramentas de sistemas de informação para auxiliar na documentação, recuperação e análise dos dados. No âmbito científico, essas ferramentas são desenvolvidas para armazenar diferentes padrões de metadados (dados sobre dados). Durante o processo de desenvolvimento destas ferramentas, destaca-se a adoção de padrões como a Linguagem Unificada de Modelagem (UML, do Inglês Unified Modeling Language), cujos diagramas auxiliam na modelagem de diferentes aspectos do software. O objetivo deste estudo é apresentar uma ferramenta de sistemas de informação para auxiliar na documentação dos dados das Organizações por meio de metadados e destacar o processo de modelagem de software, por meio da UML. Será abordado o Padrão de Metadados Digitais Geoespaciais, amplamente utilizado na catalogação de dados por Organizações científicas de todo mundo, e os diagramas dinâmicos e estáticos da UML como casos de uso, sequências e classes. O desenvolvimento das ferramentas de sistemas de informação pode ser uma forma de promover a organização e a divulgação de dados científicos. No entanto, o processo de modelagem requer especial atenção para o desenvolvimento de interfaces que estimularão o uso das ferramentas de sistemas de informação.

Carta de Aptidão para a implantação de rodovias e avaliação de alternativas de traçado com uso de geotecnologias

This study discuss the use of the geotechnologies to aid the planners on the terrain aptness definition for highways implantation and on the different trace evaluation to the extention of the Governador Carvalho Pinto highway, between Taubaté-SP and Aparecida do Norte-SP. Fratures on the area were mapping using Landsat ETM+, band Pan. In order to elaborate the phisical aptness chart for highway implantation was used the Analitical Hierarchy Process (AHP) operation, in on geographical information system (GIS). Using GIS were realized a ponderate middle with the soils, rocks, relief, slope, fractures and land use/cover maps. Using this physical aptness chart and joinning it with urban and restrict areas (that was inserted by the Boolean operation), were obtained a viability chart for highway implantation. Based on it were proposed three aleatory traces for the Carvalho Pinto highway. This traces were evaluated with the cross tabulation operation. The integration of the restrict areas, land use and phisical aptness in digital media can offer for the planners the cartography of the viability for the highway implantation. The evaliation of these three traces, based on the viability chart, can subsidyse the decision by the planners.