I’m delighted to announce that the article entitled “The integration of Information and Communication Technology into medical practice” has been accepted and is already in press at the  International Journal of Medical Informatics. As soon as possible I will upload a pre-print version.

PREPRINT

Please cite this article as:

Lupiáñez-Villanueva, F., Hardey, M., Torrent, J., & Ficapal, P. (2010). The integration of Information and Communication Technology into medical practice. Int J Med Inform, 79(7), 478–491.

PUBMED link

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES:

To identify doctors’ utilization of ICT; to develop and characterise a typology of doctors’ utilization of ICT and to identify factors that can enhance or inhibit the use of these technologies within medical practice.

METHODS:

An online survey of the 16,531 members of the Physicians Association of Barcelona who had a registered email account in 2006 was carried out. Factor analysis, cluster analysis and binomial logit model were undertaken.

RESULTS:

Multivariate statistics analysis of the 2199 responses obtained revealed two profiles of adoption of ICT. The first profile (38.61% of respondents) represents those doctors who place high emphasis on ICT within their practice. This group is thus referred to as ‘integrated doctors’. The second profile (61.39% of respondents) represents those doctors who make less use of ICT so are consequently labelled ‘non-integrated doctors’. From the statistical modelling, it was observed that an emphasis on international information; emphasis on ICT for research and medical practice; emphasis on information systems to consult and prescribe; undertaking teaching/research activities; a belief that the use of the Internet improved communication with patients and practice in both public and private health organizations play a positive and significant role in the probability of being an ‘integrated doctor’.

CONCLUSIONS:

The integration of ICT within medical practice cannot be adequately understood and appreciated without examining how doctors are making use of ICT within their own practice, organizational contexts and the opportunities and constraints afforded by institutional, professional and patient expectations and demands.

Please cite this article as:

Lupiáñez-Villanueva, F., Hardey, M., Torrent, J., & Ficapal, P. (2010). The integration of Information and Communication Technology into medical practice. Int J Med Inform, 79(7), 478–491.

PUBMED link

On March 15th to 18th the Ministerial High Level Conference on eHealth and the World Health IT Conference and Exhibition were being held in the same week in a joint initiative called “e-Health Week 2010”. First of all, I would like to congratulate the organizers, specially TICSALUT Foundation and ehealthweek2010, for the very well organized conference and their social media coverage.

The conference was divided into five themes:

• eHealth for Sustainable Healthcare Delivery
• eHealth Addressing Global Challenges through Local Actions
• eHealth works: Here is the Evidence
• eHealth Market: Past and Prospects
• eHealth User Platform

Furthermore,  Paralel sessions and Plenary Sessions were coveraged by @ehealthweek2010 using Twitter #hastag as follow:

Paralel Sessions

• eHealth Governance
• How can IT Help Fight Pandemics
• Is Sustainability of Healthcare Possible without eHealth?
• When Telemedicine does Deliver!
• Embedding eHealth into New Professional Curricula
• Ageing - A Global Challenge
• Empowering the Patient through Information Delivery
• Beyond Technical Interoperability
• eHealth for the Economy
• ICT for a Global Infraestructure for Health Research
• eHealth and Healthcare Org The Chiken and the Egg
• Standards for a Global Scene
• eHealth Procurement
• eHealth for Mental Health

Plenary Sessions

• The ehealth Agenda in the UE
• The right information, at correct place and at the right time
• 2.0 Health care in practice
• EU-US cooperation in eHealth: facing common challenges
• EHealth for urgent public health challenges
• How contributes eHealth in health and well being
• The impact of eHealth in organizations and health personnel
• The dangerous decade. Challenges for system builders national health information
• European market of e-health: dream or reality?

I also had the opportunity to tweet some of the sessions. On one hand, it was a wonderful opportunity for networking and for watching in action how policy-makers, practicioners (specially Hospital managers and IT managers) and the ICT Health industry work together. On the other hand, there was a lack of analytical/empirical presentations so it was remarked by most of the participants that more research is needed. Furthermore, there are many eHealth, mHealth, Health 2.0,…. Health has been always related to technology so probably it is time to delete all the letters and just talk about HEALTH. Nowadays, HEALTH could not be understood without Information and Communication Technologies and these technologies could not be understood without economic, organization, social and cultural changes.

“Innovative health technologies: health systems in transition Workshop”

Supported by: Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3)

Organized by: Francisco Lupiáñez-Villanueva (Internet Interdisciplinary Institute –UOC) and Michael Hardey (Hull/York Medical School – Science and Technology Studies Unit, Department of Sociology, University of York)

Data: 26th November

Place: UOC IN3 building. Av. Canal Olímpic, s/n. Edifici B3, 08860 Castelldefels (Barcelona)

Andrew Webster’s presentation - Innovation in health: a social science perspective

This presentation offers a brief account of the ways in which innovation, and more specifically medical innovation, can be understood from within a social science perspective, illustrating the ways in which innovation has to be seen as an articulation of both old and new assemblages, the broad range of socio-technical relations that make it possible and indeed workable. In light of this discussion, the paper goes on to raise a number of issues that need to be addressed in future policy and practice contexts, relating to the take-up, choice, evaluation and globalisation of innovation.

Andrew Webster

Professor Andrew Webster is Director of the Science and Technology Studies Unit (SATSU), and Head of Department of Sociology at the University of York. He was Director of the £5m ESRC/MRC Innovative Health Technologies Programme, is member of various national Boards and Committees (including the UK Stem Cell Bank Steering Committee and UK National Stem Cell Network Steering Committee) and was Specialist Advisor to the House of Commons Health Select Committee. He is national co-ordinator the ESRC’s £3.5m Stem Cells Initiative (2005-9), and was a member of the Royal Society’s Expert Working Group on Health Informatics. He is currently undertaking externally funded research on stem cells as well as the implementation of pharmacogenetics into clinical practice, and is coordinating a new European (EC) grant on Regenerative Medicine (REMEDiE). He is Co-Editor of the Health Technology and Society Series: Palgrave Macmillan (launched at the Royal Society, October 25 2006). His most recent book is Health, Technology and Society: A Sociological Critique (Palgrave Macmillan) 2007. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in 2006.

Today I have the great opportunity to attend at a research seminar entitled “The Hacker Ethic: The New Culture after the Current Global Economic Crisis” led by Prof. Pekka Himanen, who is currently a Visiting Professor at Internet Interdisciplinary Institute.

After a very inspiring presentation, Prof. Himanen has encouraged us to keep the discussion online following an open hacker ethic. So here goes my thoughts about his presentation and his challenges:

1. I wonder how and to what extend the results of the analysis carried out in collaboration Rita Espanha and Gustavo Cardoso about the Internet users within the World Internet Project could help to identify those users who can easily face the three challenges mentioned by Prof. Himanen, another 3C formula: (Clean = enviromental crisis) + (Care = welfare state 2.0) + (Culture = multicultural life) and also could clearly identify those who will be excluded or disconected.
2. I wonder how and to what extend the Catalan BioRegion could be considered as part of what Prof. Himanen has called “Innovation center dynamics” due to Prof. Himanen 3C formula:  “culture of creativity” + “community of enrichment” + “creative people”.

I’m excited about the online discussion and Friday meeting.

On 26th October I have the opportunity to act as a moderator in a symposium called Communication in health 2.0, organized by the Institute for Continuing Education (IDEC) and the University of Pompeu Fabra’s Science Communication Observatory (OCC). First of all, I would like to thank Vladimir de Semir, Gemma Revuelta and Clara Armengou for their invitation and their organization of the symposuum. I really think that University has a role as a hub to disseminate and research about this topic in collaboration with the rest of the actors (industry, healthcare providers, professionals, Government,…).

Act as a moderator gave me the opportunity to work on the Health Communication field as a framework of part of the research I have been doing and develop the first step towards the conceptualization of Health Mass-Self Communication.

UPDATE

Following Ismael Peña advises I have drawn new graphics that represents the relationship between people living with chronic disease and the Internet in Catalonia. It looks like the inverse care law could be also applied to these citizens.

I have started to explore and analyse the relationship between people who live with chronic disease and the Internet in Catalonia based on Internet, Health and Society. Analysis of the uses of Internet related to health in Catalonia and all the inputs gathered during my period as a visiting researcher at Science and Technology Studies Unit (SATSU) in the Department of Sociology at University of York.

I would like to share some of the preliminary figures, it is just a working in progress to a multivariate statistical analysis.

Of course any comments or suggestions will be very welcome.

Yesterday I had the pleasure to attend the defence of Ismael Peña‘ thesis Measuring digital development for policy-making: models, stages, characteristics and causes, “which deals about the digital economy and whether governments should help in its development for it might have a positive impact on the real economy and on the society at large”.

Dissertation supervisor: Tim Kelly

Composition of the committee:

President: Tim Unwin (University of London)
Secretary: Joan Torrent Sellens (UOC)
Members: Robin Mansell (London School of Economics)
Bruno Lanvin (INSEAD)
Laura Sartori (Università di Bologna)

Substitutes:
Gustavo Cardoso (Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa)
Rosa Borge Bravo (UOC)

CONGRATULATIONS Dr. Peña-López. I’m proud to work with you in the same research group I2TIC.

I would like to disseminate a paper entitled Knowledge, networks and economic activity: an analysis of the effects of the network on the knowledge-based economy written by Joan Torrent, director of ICTs Interdisciplinary Research Group (i2TIC), brand new research group I belong to.

This paper contextualises the disruptive change of the transition to a knowledge-based economy and discusses the social sciences postulations with regards to this phenomenon. Once the general context is explained, the article focuses on the microeconomic foundations, understanding knowledge as an input and as a commodity. Finally, after discussing the microeconomics of knowledge, the paper tackles network externalities and their  impact on economic functions and market structure.

Abstract

The progressive consolidation of a knowledge-based economy has caused network effects to become a focal point of analysis into the changes in behaviour evinced by economic agents. This article analyses the changes in production and demand for knowledge commodities arising from network externalities. The analysis reveals two distinct patterns of behaviour in knowledge-based economic activity. Observable knowledge commodities are governed by the effect of direct and indirect network externalities. Also, their demand curve and business strategy depend on new-user entry (marginal value) and the relative size of the network. However, tacit knowledge commodities are governed by learning network externalities and their demand curve and business strategies are dependent on the value generated by the addition of the goods themselves to the network (intrinsic value).

This paper could help towards a better understanding of  health care systems within the network society.

On Wednesday 8th I’m presenting Health and the Internet: Autonomy of the User in the World Internet Project Macao 2009. I have finished the presentation and I would like to share a graphic that clearly represents the difference between Access, Use and Assessment of ICT used by Catalonia citizens (based on a representative survey of Catalonia population).

Following Dr. Shock comment, age characterization of these citizens suggests that those who are younger and probably in a better health status are also more Networed oriented and those who are older and probably in a worse bad status are Excluded or Disconnected. It looks like sometimes the promises of eHealth and eGovernment forget that Inverse Care Law still matters in the Digital Era. Are online service for-profit and also non-profit providers taking care of these situations?