Doctors can experience difficulty in accessing medical information of new patients. One reason for this is that the management of medical records is mostly institution-centred. The lack of access to medical information may negatively affect patients in several ways. These include new medical tests that may need to be carried out at a cost to the patient and doctors prescribing drugs to which the patient is allergic. This research investigates how patients can play an active role in sharing their personal health records (PHRs) with doctors located in geographically separate areas. In order to achieve the goal of this research, existing literature concerning medical health records and standards was reviewed. A literature review of techniques that can be used to ensure privacy of health information was also undertaken. Interview studies were carried out with three medical practices in Port Elizabeth with the aim of contextualising the findings from the literature study. The Design Science Research methodology was used for this research. A Hybrid Model for Managing Personal Health Records in South Africa is proposed. This model allows patients to view their PHRs on their mobile phones and medical practitioners to manage the patients’ PHRs using a web-based application. The patients’ PHR information is stored both on a cloud server and on mobile devices hence the hybrid nature. Two prototypes were developed as a proof of concept; a mobile application for the patients and a web-based application for the medical practitioners. A field study was carried out with the NMMU health services department and 12 participants over a period of two weeks. The results of the field study were highly positive. The successful evaluation of the prototypes provides empirical evidence that the proposed model brings us closer to the realisation of ubiquitous access to PHRS in South Africa.

Data quality is one of many challenges experienced in electronic healthcare (e-health) services in South Africa. The collection of data with substandard data quality leads to inappropriate information for health and management purposes. Evidence of challenges with regard to data quality in e-health systems led to the purpose of this study, namely to prioritise data quality challenges experienced by data users of e-health systems in South Africa. The study followed a sequential QUAL-quan mixed method research design to realise the research purpose. After carrying out a literature review on the background of e-health and the current status of research on data quality challenges, a qualitative study was conducted to verify and extend the identified possible e-health data quality challenges. A quantitative study to prioritise data quality challenges experienced by data users of e-health systems followed. Data users of e-health systems in South Africa served as the unit of analysis in the study. The data collection process included interviews with four data quality experts to verify and extend the possible e-health data quality challenges identified from literature. This was followed by a survey targeting 100 data users of e-health systems in South Africa for which 82 responses were received. A prioritised list of e-health data quality challenges has been compiled from the research results. This list can assist data users of e-health systems in South Africa to improve the quality of data in those systems. The most important e-health data quality challenge is a lack of training for e-health systems data users. The prioritised list of e-health data quality challenges allowed for evidence-based recommendations which can assist health institutions in South Africa to ensure future data quality in e-health systems. / School of Computing / M. Sc. (Computing)

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 236-249).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Alberta, 2009. / A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Engineering Management, Department of Mechanical Engineering. Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on October 23, 2009). Includes bibliographical references.

Africa has been seeing a steady increase in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) systems deployed in health care institutions. This is evidenced by the funding that has been going into health information systems from both the government and the donor organisations. Large numbers of national and international agencies, research organisations, Non- Governmental Organisations(NGOs) etc continue to carry out studies and develop systems and procedures to exploit the power of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in public and private health institutions. This uncoordinated mass migration to electronic medical record systems in Africa has created a heterogeneous and complex computing environment in health care institutions, where most of the deployed systems have technologies that are local, proprietary and insular. Furthermore, the electronic infrastructure in Africa meant to facilitate the electronic exchange of information has a number of constraints. The infrastructure connectivity on which ICT applications run, is still segmented. Most parts of Africa lack the availability of a reliable connectivity infrastructure. In some cases, there is no connectivity at all. This work aims at using Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) to address the problems of interoperability of systems deployed in Africa and suggest design architectures that are able to deal with the state of poor connectivity. SOA offers to bring better interoperability of systems deployed and re-usability of existing IT assets, including those using different electronic health standards in a resource constrained environment like Africa. / Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Technology: Information Technology in the Faculty of Informatics And Design at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology 2014

Thesis (MTech (Information Technology))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2012. / This research is an attempt to investigate the utilisation of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in Healthcare to support the flow of HIV/AIDS patient’s general information in public and private sector. Furthermore, the research examines the detail flow of database information for healthcare service delivery to patients, in particular HIV/AIDS patients, in Khayelitsha Township. Finally, the research will detail the types of technologies currently being utilised to transfer this information, technology utilised for capturing or data collection profile of the patient. The research study data collecting was done in 2009 in mostly private and public healthcare centre in Khayelitsha township. First, the study will concentrate on general utilisation of ICT in healthcare service delivery and flow of information for public and private sector healthcare centres. Additionally, the research also looks at NGOs such as HIV/AIDS Unit in Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) and Treament Action Campaign (TAC) to find out what ICT equipment is being utilised to transfer this information to adult people to inform and make them to be aware of HIV/AIDS and improve healthcare service delivery to patients and particularly to HIV/AIDS patients. Taking NGO’s such as TAC and CPUT HIV/AIDS Unit that are well informed about HIV/AIDS, nationally and internationally will make our research results to be more precise. The research will also look at the utilisation of ICT in flow of information at healthcare centre such as communication between healthcare providers such as receptionist/clerk, nurses, doctors and medical researchers since they are the first people who deal with HIV/AIDS patient cases when they come for healthcare provision.

Das Dissertationsvorhaben greift zu Beginn einen Praxisfall im Krankenhaus auf und verdeutlicht exemplarisch, dass der Krankenhausarzt in einen Konflikt zwischen ökonomischen und ethischen Anforderungen gerät. Um die Frage beantworten zu können, wie die soziale Praxis der Krankenhausärzte gelingen kann, wird das Problem im ersten Schritt rekonstruiert. Nach der Diskussion verschiedener Lösungsansätze für das Problem im zweiten Schritt, werden im dritten Schritt Anregungen für die Praxis abgeleitet.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Literature pertaining to geriatric care contains rich information regarding the best practices related to geriatric health care issues. The publication domain of geriatric care is small as compared to other health related areas, however, there are over a million articles pertaining to different cases and case interventions capturing best practice outcomes. If the data found in these articles could be harvested and processed effectively, such knowledge could then be translated from research to practice in a quicker and more efficient manner. Geriatric literature contains multiple domains or practice areas and within these domains is a wealth of information such as interventions, information on care for elderly, case studies, and real life scenarios. These articles are comprised of a variety of causal relationships such as the relationship between interventions and disorders. The goal of this study is to identify these causal relations from published abstracts. Natural language processing and statistical methods were adopted to identify and extract these causal relations. Using the developed methods, causal relations were extracted with precision of 79.54%, recall of 81% while only having a false positive rate 8%.

Mental illness is not only the leading cause of disability among adults, but there is also an emerging public health crisis in childhood mental illness. A majority of parents do not recognize symptoms of psychological disorder in their children, and current policies and programs for mental health service delivery are not sufficiently responsive to the early help-seeking dynamics of families. Using a concurrent mixed methods design, this study explored how parents in the Pikes Peak region of Colorado learned to recognize their child's mental illness. Phenomenological interviews, augmented by poetic inquiry and quantitative measurements, were used to discover factors that inhibited or enhanced five mothers' recognitions. These factors were then evaluated using a frequency distribution analysis and a rank-order correlation. The phenomenon of recognition was, for these mothers, a process of waiting to hear that 'normal' had stopped, wherein they miscategorized symptoms as normal behaviors in a passing developmental phase. Prior experience with mental illness appeared to significantly decrease both the length of time and the level of distress necessary for recognition. Ultimately, recognition did not occur until someone in their social network validated their concerns and provided explicit confirmation, which galvanized them to seek treatment. Governance network collaborations can facilitate positive social change by standardizing guidance on how to differentiate symptoms of a disorder from normal childhood development. Public policies and programs such as universal mental health screening, mental health literacy, and more supportive and responsive school policies can foster dialogue for parental recognition in Colorado and throughout the country.

Several factors are driving the transition from paper-based health records to electronic health record systems. In the United States, the adoption rate of electronic health record systems significantly increased after "Meaningful Use" incentive program was started in 2009. While increased use of electronic health record systems could improve the efficiency and quality of healthcare services, it can also lead to a number of security and privacy issues, such as identity theft and healthcare fraud. Such incidents could have negative impact on trustworthiness of electronic health record technology itself and thereby could limit its benefits. In this dissertation, we tackle three challenges that we believe are important to improve the security and privacy in electronic health record systems. Our approach is based on an analysis of real-world incidents, namely theft and misuse of patient identity, unauthorized usage and update of electronic health records, and threats from insiders in healthcare organizations. Our contributions include design and development of a user-centric monitoring agent system that works on behalf of a patient (i.e., an end user) and securely monitors usage of the patient's identity credentials as well as access to her electronic health records. Such a monitoring agent can enhance patient's awareness and control and improve accountability for health records even in a distributed, multi-domain environment, which is typical in an e-healthcare setting. This will reduce the risk and loss caused by misuse of stolen data. In addition to the solution from a patient's perspective, we also propose a secure system architecture that can be used in healthcare organizations to enable robust auditing and management over client devices. This helps us further enhance patients' confidence in secure use of their health data.