The purpose of this study was to investigate the preferred method of learning about heart disease by adult learners. This research study also investigated if there was a statistically significant difference between race/ethnicity, age, and gender of adult learners and their preferred method of learning preventative heart disease care. This research study further explored the effectiveness of adult education on reducing or preventing serious, life-threatening heart disease, including heart attack. This research is of significant importance as the adult population and age in many developed countries is increasing. It was anticipated that the study would unearth the effectiveness of various educational methods of providing information to adult learners to inform them how to prevent heart attacks. For this quantitative investigation, participants were limited to students enrolled in at least one college course (three credit hours) at the Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton campus who were 25 years of age or older. During the course of this study, three methods of learning; formal, informal, and non-formal, as well as two delivery methods; online and traditional, were evaluated. Over one third of the study’s participants (35%) preferred to receive healthrelated information via email (35%). This major finding was statistically significant (x² (6) = 82.171; p < .001). Further, statistically significant findings were manifest for study participants for omnibus age grouping and in the 25-35 years of age grouping, for those who were White and Hispanic by ethnic background, and for both females and males participating in this study. The results of this research may assist health department administrators in utilizing varying methods for distributing health information, keeping the preferred knowledge acquisition method of students on college and university campuses especially in mind. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2016. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Appropriate e-services as well as revenue generation capabilities are key to the deployment and the sustainability for ICT installations in poor areas, particularly common in developing country. The area of e-Health is a promising area for e-services that are both important to the population in those areas and potentially of direct interest to National Health Organizations, which already spend money for Health campaigns there. This thesis focuses on the design, implementation, and full functional testing of HealthAware, an application that allows health organization to set up targeted awareness campaigns for poor areas. Requirements for such application are very specific, starting from the fact that the preparation of the campaign and its execution/consumption happen in two different environments from a technological and social point of view. Part of the research work done for this thesis was to make the above requirements explicit and then use them in the design. This phase of the research was facilitated by the fact that the thesis' work was executed within the context of the Siyakhula Living Lab (SLL; www.siyakhulaLL.org), which has accumulated multi-year experience of ICT deployment in such areas. As a result of the found requirements, HealthAware comprises two components, which are web-based, Java applications that run in a peer-to-peer fashion. The first component, the Dashboard, is used to create, manage, and publish information for conducting awareness campaigns or surveys. The second component, HealthMessenger, facilitates users' access to the campaigns or surveys that were created using the Dashboard. The HealthMessenger was designed to be hosted on TeleWeaver while the Dashboard is hosted independently of TeleWeaver and simply communicates with the HealthMessenger through webservices. TeleWeaver is an application integration platform developed within the SLL to host software applications for poor areas. Using a core service of TeleWeaver, the profile service, where all the users' defining elements are contained, campaigns and surveys can be easily and effectively targeted, for example to match specific demographics or geographic locations. Revenue generation is attained via the logging of the interactions of the target users in the communities with the applications in TeleWeaver, from which billing data is generated according to the specific contractual agreements with the National Health Organization. From a general point of view, HealthAware contributes to the concrete realizations of a bidirectional access channel between Health Organizations and users in poor communities, which not only allows the communication of appropriate content in both directions, but get 'monetized' and in so doing becomes a revenue generator.

The fragmented nature of modern health care provision makes it increasingly difficult to achieve continuity of care. This is equally true in the context of the South African healthcare landscape. This results in a strong emphasis on the informational dimension of continuity of care which highlights the importance of the continuity of medical records. Paper-based methods of record keeping are inadequate to support informational continuity of care which leads to an increased interest in electronic methods of record keeping through the adoption of various Health Information Technologies (HITs). This research project investigates the role that various HITs such as Personal Health Records (PHRs), Electronic Medical Records (EMRs), and Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) can play in improving informational continuity of care resulting in the development of a standards-based technological model for the South African healthcare sector. This technological model employs appropriate HITs to address the problem of informational continuity of care in the South African healthcare landscape The benefits that are possible through the adoption of the proposed technological model can only be realized if the proposed HITs are used in a meaningful manner once adopted and implemented. The Delphi method is employed to identify factors that need to be addressed to encourage the adoption and meaningful use of such HITs in the South African healthcare landscape. Lastly, guidelines are formulated to encourage the adoption and meaningful use of HITs in the South African healthcare landscape to improve the continuity of care. The guidelines address both the technological requirements on a high level, as well as the factors that need to be addressed to encourage the adoption and meaningful use of the technological components suggested. These guidelines will play a significant role in raising awareness of the factors that need to be addressed to create an environment conducive to the adoption and meaningful use of appropriate HITs in order to improve the continuity of care in the South African healthcare landscape.

A decade ago, only 10% of U.S. healthcare organizations used an electronic health record (EHR), whereas more than 99% do today. The rapid adoption of EHRs has radically transformed communication of health information. Previously, health records consisted of providers handwriting notes in paper charts, rarely seen by outsiders. Today, EHRs integrate information from dozens of sources, to be used by providers, administrators, researchers, and increasingly, patients. Last year alone, an estimated 100 million Americans interacted with their own health records through patient-facing systems. This information has been used to prevent medical errors, reduce nonadherence to treatment, increase shared decision-making, and improve health outcomes. However, failure to comprehend this information can negate any potential benefits and even cause medically-harmful miscommunication. Therefore, it is critical to represent health information using methods that promote patients' comprehension. Despite the need for better representation, today's patient-facing systems do little more than present unexplained data, and limited guidance has been given by research or policy. In this thesis, we present new evidence about representation of health information in patient-facing systems, and we use this evidence to develop informatics methods that promote comprehension. Two aims center on (1) medical abbreviations and acronyms, one of the biggest barriers to patients' comprehension of their health records, and (2) changes in patient-reported outcomes, one of the most important informants of chronic disease management. We assess challenges with representing this information to patients, using randomized trials and qualitative studies. Then, we develop and evaluate an array of informatics methods for overcoming challenges, specifically: (1) machine learning methods for automated expansion of medical abbreviations and acronyms, and (2) information visualization methods for representing changes in patient-reported outcomes. In the future, these interventions can be implemented in patient-facing systems to optimize comprehension. Our evidence will guide strategies for meaningful communication that, ultimately, will build trust between patients and the healthcare system that serves them.

Although there is a general trend of aging as the expected longitude increase for human being, the developing countries which, according to the report of WHO, have grown old even before grow rich face a more challenging state than the developed countries. These countries, especially their rural parts, are less likely to adapt to the aging trend with relatively smaller medical budget, less developed professional training of care takers, and a lack of public awareness of prevention and treatment of geriatric disease.(Organization, Health, Promotion, & Course, 2011) On the other hand, it indicates a big stage for distant medical service to play because of its lower cost of implementation and effectiveness in controlling the overall medical expenditure given such service would help to prevent and control at a earlier stage of disease. Therefore in developing countries like China and for population like the older citizen who has less mobility, online healthcare information platform is expected to play a much more important role than in developed countries. At the same time, experienced can be borrowed from investigations and installations of online platform of health information designed for the older population where they usually serve as a supplement to the primary health care facility in developed countries like UK. / published_or_final_version / Library and Information Management / Master / Master of Science in Library and Information Management

The problem of the study was to establish valid criteria for evaluating health-related World Wide Web [WWW] sites. From a table of specifications, a pool of 39 items was developed into a Criteria List. A nine member jury of experts composed of professionals from the discipline of Library and Information Science was used to determine content validity of the items. The items on the Criteria List were sent to the expert panel of jurors for the first review. To determine which items would be retained, revised or eliminated, the items were subjected to both a quantitative and qualitative review. The revised Criteria List was then sent to the expert panel of jurors for the second review. Responses from the second review were also subjected to qualitative and quantitative analysis. However, this time the quantitative review included the use of the Content-Validity Ratio [CVR]. All items on the Criteria List that were not statistically significant at p <.05 were eliminated. The final Criteria List contained 27 items from the 39 originally proposed items. / Department of Physiology and Health Science

The evolution of e-health has the potential to assist in the management of scarce resources and the shortage of skills, enhance efficiencies, improve quality and increase work productivity within the healthcare sector. As a result, an increase is seen in e-health solutions developments with the aim to improve healthcare services, hospital information systems, health decision support, telemedicine and other technical systems that have the potential to reduce cost, improve quality, and enhance the accessibility and delivery of healthcare. However, unfortunately their implementation contiues to fail. Although there are several reasons for this, in this study a lack of project quality management is viewed as a key contributor to the failure of e-health solutions implementation projects in rural hospitals. This results in neglected aspects of quality assurance (QA), which forms an integral part of project quality management. The purpose of this study is to develop a Genertic Quality Assurance Model (GQAM) for the successful acquisition (i.e. development and implementation) of e-health solutions in rural hospitals in the Eastern Cape Province to enable improved quality of care and service delivery. In order to develop and test this model it was necessary to identify the QA methodologies that are currently used in rural hospitals and to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses, as well as their impact on project success. The study is divided into four phases; in each phase different study designs were followed. The study used triangulation of qualitative and some elements of quantitative research approaches, in terms of which a case study approach was adpoted to answer the research questions. This study did indeed develop a GQAM that can be used to ensure e-health solution success in rural hospitals. Furthermore, to aid in the implementation of this model, a set of QA value chain implementation guidelines were developed, as a framework, to inject the nodel into typical (SDLC) phases.

No abstract available.

No abstract available.

Innovative primary care models that deliver comprehensive primary care to address medical and social needs are an established means of improving health outcomes and reducing healthcare costs among persons living with chronic disease. Care management is one such approach that requires providers to monitor their respective patient panels and intervene on patients requiring care. Health information technology (IT) has been established as a critical component of care management and similar care models. While there exist a plethora of health IT systems for facilitating primary care, there is limited research on their ability to support care management and its emphasis on monitoring panels of patients with complex needs. In this dissertation, I advance the understanding of how computational methods can better support clinicians delivering care management, and use the management of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as an example scenario of use. The research described herein is segmented into 3 aims; the first was to understand the processes and barriers associated with care management and assess whether existing IT can support clinicians in this domain. The second and third aim focused on informing potential solutions to the technological shortcomings identified in the first aim. In the studies of the first aim, I conducted interviews and observations in two HIV primary care programs and analyzed the data generated to create a conceptual framework of population monitoring and identify challenges faced by clinicians in delivering care management. In the studies of the second aim, I used computational methods to advance the science of extracting from the patient record social and behavioral determinants of health (SBDH), which are not easily accessible to clinicians and represent an important barrier to care management. In the third aim, I conducted a controlled experimental evaluation to assess whether data visualization can improve clinician’s ability to maintain awareness of their patient panels.