While healthcare is the biggest service industry on the globe it has yet to realize the full potential of the e-business revolution in the form of e-health. This is due to many reasons including the fact that the healthcare industry is faced with many complex challenges in trying to deliver cost-effective, high-value, accessible healthcare and has traditionally been slow to embrace new business techniques and technologies. Given that e-health to a great extent is a macro level concern that has far reaching micro level implications, this paper firstly develops a framework to assess a country's preparedness with respect to embracing e-health (the application of e-commerce to healthcare) and from this an e-health preparedness grid to facilitate the assessment of any e-health initiative. Taken together the integrative framework and preparedness grid provide useful and necessary tools to enable successful e-health initiatives to ensue by helping country and/or organization within a country to identify and thus address areas that require further attention in order for it to undertake a successful e-health initiative.

This paper discusses the reasons why evidence of clinical effectiveness is not enough to facilitate adequate adoption of robotic technologies for upper-limb neurorehabilitation. The paper also provides a short review of the state of the art technologies. In particular, the paper highlights the barriers to the adoption of these technologies by the markets in which they are, or should be, deployed. On the other hand, the paper explores how low rates of adoption may depend on communication biases between the producers of the technologies and potential adopters. Finally, it is shown that, although technology-efficacy issues are usually well-documented, barriers to adoption also originate from the lack of solid evidence of the economic implications of the new technologies.

This article proposes a grounded theoretical framework of R@D technoloa cooperation based on the congruence of existing theor;;es oSint~r-organizational relationsh$s. The theory is grounded in the empirical experiences of the indu.rtgmniur,rsi cooperatine centers in the US. I t addresses two re.rearch questions: (1) Lhy do univer~itzes and industrial companies engage in cooperatioe R@D?(2) What factors azect their sunival? Perceived resource dependency is proposed to be a motivator for initiating cooperative R@D. Interaction theories explain survir~abili&, in that prior interaction between the parties and the degree of institutionalization qf the interactions are hypothesized to explain survival over time. The intens$ of interaction is also sugge.cttd to improve the chances for surui~~al, but within a range of optimalig (not too much and not too little). I,i:mitation.r and implications for research and poliy are also discussed.

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Recent trends in organizations and the findings of the entrepreneurship literature suggest that middle managers, including MS/OR practitioners, need to function as internal corporate entrepreneurs. To survive and to succeed in changing organizations, middle managers need to think and to act as intrapreneurs. I hypothesize that as the structure of organizations becomes more amorphous, middle managers who exhibit intrapreneurial behavior perform more successfully than those who exhibit traditional behavior. Implications for middle managers and MS/OR practitioners are (1) to be more creative and innovative; (2) to constantly improve and extend their range of skills, and (3) to link their effort to the strategic objectives of customers.

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