The new digital revolution: From the consumer Internet to the industrial Internet

The new digital technologies have led to widespread use of cloud computing, recognition of the potential of big data analytics, and significant progress in aspects of the Internet of Things, such as home automation, smart cities and grids and digital manufacturing. In addition to closing gaps in respect of the basic necessities of access and usage, now the conditions must be established for using the new platforms and finding ways to participate actively in the creation of content and even new applications and platforms. This message runs through the three chapters of this book. Chapter I presents the main features of the digital revolution, emphasizing that today’s world economy is a digital economy. Chapter II examines the region’s strengths and weaknesses with respect to digital access and consumption. Chapter III reviews the main policy debates and urges countries to take a more proactive approach towards, for example, regulation, network neutrality and combating cybercrime. The conclusion highlights two crucial elements: first, the need to take steps towards a single regional digital market that can compete in a world of global platforms by tapping the benefits of economies of scale and developing network economies; and second, the significance of the next stage of the digital agenda for Latin America and the Caribbean (eLAC2018), which will embody the latest updates to a cooperation strategy that has been in place for over a decade.

Report of the Fifth Ministerial Conference on the Information Society in Latin America and the Caribbean

eLAC 2018

Information Systems Outsourcing. Enduring themes, global challenges, and process opportunities

he notion of outsourcing – making arrangements with an external entity for the provision of goods or services to supplement or replace internal efforts – has been around for centuries. The outsourcing of information systems (IS) is however a much newer concept but one which has been growing dramatically. This book attempts to synthesize what is known about IS outsourcing by dividing the subject into three interrelated parts: (1) Traditional Information Technology Outsourcing, (2) Information Technolgy Offshoring, and (3) Business Process Outsourcing. The book should be of interest to all academics and students in the field of Information Systems as well as corporate executives and professionals who seek a more profound analysis and understanding of the underlying factors and mechanisms of outsourcing.

Information as Property

Information is widely regarded as one of the key concepts of modern society. The production, distribution and use of information are some of the key aspects of modern economies. Driven by technological progress information has become a good in its own right. This established an information economy and challenged the law to provide an apt framework suitable to promote the production of information, enable its distribution and efficient allocation, and deal with the risks inherent in information technology. Property rights are a major component of such a framework. However, information as an object of property rights is not limited to intellectual property but may also occur as personality aspects or even tangible property. Accordingly, information as property can be found in the area of intellectual property, personality protection and other property rights. This essay attempts to categorize three different types of information that can be understood as a good in the economic sense and an object in the legal sense: semantic information, syntactic information and structural information. It shows how legal ownership of such information is established by different subjective rights. In addition the widespread debate regarding the justification of intellectual property rights is demonstrated from the wider perspective of informational property in general. Finally, in light of current debates, this essay explores whether “data producers” shall have a new kind of property right in data.

Quality evaluation of the available Internet information regarding pain during orthodontic treatment

OBJECTIVE To investigate the quality of the data disseminated via the Internet regarding pain experienced by orthodontic patients. MATERIALS AND METHODS A systematic online search was performed for 'orthodontic pain' and 'braces pain' separately using five search engines. The first 25 results from each search term-engine combination were pooled for analysis. After excluding advertising sites, discussion groups, video feeds, and links to scientific articles, 25 Web pages were evaluated in terms of accuracy, readability, accessibility, usability, and reliability using recommended research methodology; reference textbook material, the Flesch Reading Ease Score; and the LIDA instrument. Author and information details were also recorded. RESULTS Overall, the results indicated a variable quality of the available informational material. Although the readability of the Web sites was generally acceptable, the individual LIDA categories were rated of medium or low quality, with average scores ranging from 16.9% to 86.2%. The orthodontic relevance of the Web sites was not accompanied by the highest assessment results, and vice versa. CONCLUSIONS The quality of the orthodontic pain information cited by Web sources appears to be highly variable. Further structural development of health information technology along with public referral to reliable sources by specialists are recommended.

Educational Technology-Benefits and Barriers

Statement of Problem: The second background paper for the Medical School Objective Project (MSOP), defined Educational Technology (ET) as the use of information technology to facilitate student’s learning.1 Medical schools as a group have made limited progress in accomplishing the recommended educational technology goals and there had been much greater use of such technology in basic sciences courses than in clinical clerkships. We will explore the positive and negative implications of incorporating ET into the educational experience of TMC schools. [See PDF for complete abstract]

Clinical decision support capabilities of commercially-available clinical information systems.

BACKGROUND: The most effective decision support systems are integrated with clinical information systems, such as inpatient and outpatient electronic health records (EHRs) and computerized provider order entry (CPOE) systems. Purpose The goal of this project was to describe and quantify the results of a study of decision support capabilities in Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT) certified electronic health record systems. METHODS: The authors conducted a series of interviews with representatives of nine commercially available clinical information systems, evaluating their capabilities against 42 different clinical decision support features. RESULTS: Six of the nine reviewed systems offered all the applicable event-driven, action-oriented, real-time clinical decision support triggers required for initiating clinical decision support interventions. Five of the nine systems could access all the patient-specific data items identified as necessary. Six of the nine systems supported all the intervention types identified as necessary to allow clinical information systems to tailor their interventions based on the severity of the clinical situation and the user's workflow. Only one system supported all the offered choices identified as key to allowing physicians to take action directly from within the alert. Discussion The principal finding relates to system-by-system variability. The best system in our analysis had only a single missing feature (from 42 total) while the worst had eighteen.This dramatic variability in CDS capability among commercially available systems was unexpected and is a cause for concern. CONCLUSIONS: These findings have implications for four distinct constituencies: purchasers of clinical information systems, developers of clinical decision support, vendors of clinical information systems and certification bodies.

Book Review: Regulating Code : Good Governance and Better Regulation in the Information Age

Digital technologies have profoundly changed not only the ways we create, distribute, access, use and re-use information but also many of the governance structures we had in place. Overall, "older" institutions at all governance levels have grappled and often failed to master the multi-faceted and multi-directional issues of the Internet. Regulatory entrepreneurs have yet to discover and fully mobilize the potential of digital technologies as an influential factor impacting upon the regulability of the environment and as a potential regulatory tool in themselves. At the same time, we have seen a deterioration of some public spaces and lower prioritization of public objectives, when strong private commercial interests are at play, such as most tellingly in the field of copyright. Less tangibly, private ordering has taken hold and captured through contracts spaces, previously regulated by public law. Code embedded in technology often replaces law. Non-state action has in general proliferated and put serious pressure upon conventional state-centered, command-and-control models. Under the conditions of this "messy" governance, the provision of key public goods, such as freedom of information, has been made difficult or is indeed jeopardized.The grand question is how can we navigate this complex multi-actor, multi-issue space and secure the attainment of fundamental public interest objectives. This is also the question that Ian Brown and Chris Marsden seek to answer with their book, Regulating Code, as recently published under the "Information Revolution and Global Politics" series of MIT Press. This book review critically assesses the bold effort by Brown and Marsden.

Achieving effective biosurveillance with the Nationwide Health Information Network

The federal government is currently developing the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN). Described as a “network of networks,” the NHIN seeks to provide a nationwide, interoperable health information infrastructure that will securely connect consumers with those involved in health care. As part of the national health information technology (HIT) agenda, the NHIN aims to improve individual and population health by enabling health information to follow the consumer, be available for clinical decision-making, and support important public health measures such as biosurveillance. While the NHIN promises to improve clinical care to individuals and to reduce U.S. health care system costs overall, this electronic environment presents novel challenges for protecting individually identifiable health information. A major barrier to achieving public trust in the NHIN is the development of, and adherence to, a consistent and coordinated approach to privacy and security of health information. This paper will analyze the policy framework for electronic health information exchange with the NHIN. This exercise will demonstrate that the current policy is an effective framework for achieving effective biosurveillance with the NHIN. ^

Efficiency from pharmacy inventory technology: A means to improving quality in non-profit hospitals

Hospitals, like all organizations, have both a mission and a finite supply of resources with which to accomplish that mission. Because the inventory of therapeutic drugs is among the more expensive resources needed by a hospital to achieve its mission, a conceptual model of structure plus process equals outcome posits that adequate emphasis should be placed on optimization of the organization's investment in this important structural resource to provide highest quality outcomes. Therefore emphasis should be placed on the optimization of pharmacy inventory because lowering the financial investment in drug inventory and associated costs increases productive efficiency, a key element of quality. ^ In this study, a post-intervention analysis of a hospital pharmacy inventory management technology implementation at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center was conducted to determine if an intervention which reduced a hospital's financial investment in pharmaceutical inventory provided an opportunity to incrementally optimize the organization's mix of structural resources thereby improving quality of care. The results suggest that hospital pharmacies currently lacking technology to support automated purchasing logistics and perpetual, real-time inventory management for drugs may achieve measurable benefits from the careful implementation of such technology, enabling the hospital to lower its investment in on-hand inventory and, potentially, to reduce overall purchasing expenditures. ^ The importance of these savings to the hospital and potentially to the patient should not be underestimated for their ability to generate funding for previously unfunded public health programs or in their ability to provide financial relief to patients in the form of lower drug costs given the current climate of escalating healthcare costs and tightening reimbursements.^