A framework for assessing e-health preparedness

Abstract

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.

A Manifesto for E-Health Success

“…The grid also underscores the moderating role of the four impacts irrespective of the relative positioning on the state of preparedness of a given country. Wickramasinghe et al, 2005) 6 CONCLUSION E-commerce, as noted by the UN Secretary General's address, is an important aspect of business in today's 21 st century. No longer then is it a luxury for nations, rather it is a strategic necessity in order for countries to achieve economic and business prosperity as well as social viability.…”

E-Health readiness framework from Electronic Health Records perspective

“…Another proposed framework by Wickramasinghe et al (2005) is concerned with three domains relevant to E-Health readiness -practitioner, organisation and public; it highlights the key elements that are required for successful E-Health initiatives.…”

“…Further, how the authors of the reviewed frameworks measure or quantify readiness level is not clear even though some of the frameworks have described the readiness levels as low, medium or high level (e.g. Wickramasinghe et al (2005)). Table 2.…”

Clinical Cybersecurity Training Through Novel High Fidelity Simulations (Preprint)

“…Furthermore, when compared to sectors such as finance and government, healthcare lags significantly behind in cyber preparedness [4]. Federal laws such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) have attempted to provide a regulatory framework and improve healthcare cybersecurity but lack adequate patient safety protections and hyperfocus on the security of protected health information (PHI).…”