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Message from the Conference
Co-Chairs
Bernard Han, Ph.D.
and Sharie Falan,
Ph.D., RN, BC, CPHIMS
Center for Health
Information Technology Advancement (CHITA)
Health care has been in crisis for more than a half of a
century. The passage of the
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) by the U.S. Congress on
February 17, 2009 and the creation and adoption of the Health Care Reform
Bill by the President Obama on March 23, 2010 are simply the reflection of
the urgency for health care reform.
Ushered in with health care reform is the use of technology to
create processes whereby shared understanding through information exchange
occurs. In response to the health care mandates and in order to build a
responsive community, the constituents of Western Michigan University
created a university-wide center, the Center for Health Information
Technology Advancement (WMU-CHITA) on April 15, 2010. The establishment of WMU-CHITA is to
promote productive Health Information Technology research, education, and
services for the delivery of best health care with quality, safety,
security, and sustainability.
To fulfill this goal, with joint interests between
Relationship-Centered Care Network of Southwest Michigan (RCCSWMI) and
WMU-CHITA, a planning committee was formed in March 2011 to initiate an
International Conference on Health Information Technology Advancement
(ICHITA). The conference
planning team was commissioned to pool talents from the community, the
United States, and overseas to pursue the betterment of health care via
relationship-centered care and health information technology. While the lead-time for this event
was less than six months, the importance of the conference was well
recognized by our educational peers, both domestic and international, and
the health care and information technology stakeholders in the
community. We have not only
successfully recruited known scholars and practitioners as keynotes, speakers,
and workshop leaders for ICHITA, but also received research papers and
position papers that are to be presented at ICHITA and published in this
Transactions of ICHITA-2011, a refereed periodical that is produced in both
paper format and digital form (DVD).
An array of research
subjects have been covered by accepted research papers and position
papers. For a quick overview,
they are divided into five major tracks: Health Care Practice, Health care
Infrastructure and Implementation, Security and Privacy,
Relationship-Centered Health Care, and Health Information Technology &
Education. A brief highlight on
the contributors is given below.
Health Care
Practice. There are four papers
in this track. DeMello and Deshpande
focuses on the impacts of factors that affect the use of information
technologies (IT) in clinical practice. Their findings show that specific
strategies are needed to increase the use of IT in health care. Ravotas
addresses the issue that the use of institutionally designed documentation
may impact the practice of health care. Krishnaswamy
introduces a model to explain how electronic payment systems will improve
the efficiency of health care services. Leidig et
al. illustrates how computer modeling and simulation can be used to assist
governments in setting the health care policy.
Health care
Infrastructure and Implementation.
Three papers are accepted in this track. First, Targowski
discusses the key issues involved in health information exchange and then
proposes a top-down national health information network in support of the
implementation of electronic health records (EHR) in the United
States. Dobrzykowski
shares findings from an extensive study of the structural constraints of
Acute Care Hospitals and analysis of the adoption of EHR by different types
of hospitals. Razi et al. examine the challenges before and after the
implementation of EHR.
Security and
Privacy. There are three
presentations in this track. Lehrfeld et al. address the security and privacy issues
associated with mobile (wireless) devices and discuss how to secure
personal data when these devices are used in the health care
environment. Salih and Lilien point out
privacy threats commonly occur to electronic medical records (EMR) and/or
EHR, and a specific bundle scheme is proposed to protect sensitive data via
the use of a virtual machine.
Chen and Lee give an extensive review of security and privacy issues
in health care information systems.
Relationship-Centered
Health Care. This track is
composed of three studies. Dohan and Tan focus on the barriers and facilitators of
relationships among clinicians and present a framework that will sustain
practice audit for continuous health care quality improvement. Manning-Walsh gives a review on
relationship-centered care and proposed a model to explore issues on how
health information technology can affect relationship-centered care. Rea et al. present a social
networking adoption matrix and demonstrate how it can be applied to the
development of an expert system.
The system is to assist health care organizations in selecting a
proper social networking technology to enhance a hospital’s
relationship management with patients.
Health Information
Technology & Education.
Four papers have been selected in this track. Dobrzykowski
et al. present the curriculum development of health care for the graduate
programs at Eastern Michigan University. Falan and
Han present a new approach to the design of an undergraduate health
informatics and information management curriculum across multiple
disciplines. Rienzo discusses how the disruptive innovation theory
could be used together with HIT to salvage the health care industry. Tremblay highlights how to leverage
HIT to enhance the efficiency of health care efficiency and to create
strategic impacts on the health care industry.
As conference
co-chairs, there are many people deserving our thanks. First, our thanks go out to all of
the sponsors who provided support to ICHITA. Due to the space limit, the
names of sponsors are not listed individually. However, it cannot be overstated
that their generous support made this conference possible. Second, the contributors who
submitted papers and reviewers who provided timely comments have
significantly substantiated the quality, the value, and the contents of
this publication. We deeply appreciate your efforts. Of course, among them, the
Transactions Editor, Dr. Huei Lee, deserves our
special thanks. Dr. Lee has
tirelessly taken care of the paper submissions, blind reviews, editing, and
compilation of all papers in the Transactions. Without him, the Transactions would
never be published in time.
All program
co-directors and members on the ICHITA planning committee are also
deserving of our special thanks for their hard work and painstaking
promotion of ICHITA-2011. It is
our plan that ICHITA will be held every other year, and ICHITA-2011 sets
the landmark for an integrative effort in pursuing the excellence of health
care through health information technologies.
Lastly, definitely not
the least, Western Michigan University and the administration of WMU shall
receive our sincere thanks for their strong support of WMU-CHITA. Let us move on towards better health
care through innovative use of Information Technologies.
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