Evaluating and selecting software packages that meet the requirements of an organization are difficult aspects of software engineering process. Selecting the wrong open-source EMR software package can be costly and may adversely affect business processes and functioning of the organization. This study aims to evaluate and select open-source EMR software packages based on multi-criteria decision-making. A hands-on study was performed and a set of open-source EMR software packages were implemented locally on separate virtual machines to examine the systems more closely. Several measures as evaluation basis were specified, and the systems were selected based a set of metric outcomes using Integrated Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and TOPSIS. The experimental results showed that GNUmed and OpenEMR software can provide better basis on ranking score records than other open-source EMR software packages.
Currently, the power to master the English language has become prominent in academia, research, and business. Therefore, many non-English speaking countries, including Arab countries, are striving to improve their education systems in teaching English as a foreign language, and English vocabulary is an important factor to boost English proficiency among Arab students. Moreover, in Arab countries, there is a lack of motivation among learners of English as a foreign language which affects the learning process of students. As such, digital gaming technologies, especially mobile games, are emerging as the best way to create enthusiasm for learning new languages. Therefore, a mobile application named VocabGame was developed based on a set of persuasive guidelines, and it was launched in the Google Play Store. This paper investigated whether the developed VocabGame can motivate native Arab students learning the English language to achieve better performance. Sixty-four students were divided equally into two groups: the control group (high-performance group) and the experimental group (low-performance group). Students in the experimental group improved their motivation level significantly after the mobile learning intervention. Our findings showed that mobile game application is helpful for those students who had poor performance initially while studying English and improves their confidence. There was also an association between the pre-test and the post-test scores according to the motivation to learn based on the analysis of the covariate analysis with η_p^2 being 0.148. A mobile application game was successfully developed to motivate Arab native students to learn English as a secondary language.
Nationwide health information exchange (NHIE) continues to be a persistent concern for government agencies, despite the many efforts and the conceived benefits of sharing patient data among healthcare providers. Difficulties in ensuring global connectivity, interoperability, and concerns on security have always hampered the government from successfully deploying NHIE. By looking at NHIE from a fresh perspective and bearing in mind the pervasiveness and power of modern mobile platforms, this paper proposes a new approach to NHIE that builds on the notion of consumer-mediated HIE, albeit without the focus on central health record banks. With the growing acceptance of smartphones as reliable, indispensable, and most personal devices, we suggest to leverage the concept of mobile personal health records (PHRs installed on smartphones) to the next level. We envision mPHRs that take the form of distributed storage units for health information, under the full control and direct possession of patients, who can have ready access to their personal data whenever needed. However, for the actual exchange of data with health information systems managed by healthcare providers, the latter have to be interoperable with patient-carried mPHRs. Computer industry has long ago solved a similar problem of interoperability between peripheral devices and operating systems. We borrow from that solution the idea of providing special interfaces between mPHRs and provider systems. This interface enables the two entities to communicate with no change to either end. The design and operation of the proposed approach is explained. Additional pointers on potential implementations are provided, and issues that pertain to any solution to implement NHIE are discussed.
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