Information Technology in Healthcare

Now in its 19th year at HICSS, the Information Technology in Healthcare track serves as a forum at which healthcare, computer science, and information systems professionals can come together to discuss issues related to the application of information technology in healthcare. While the medical, technical, and managerial perspectives each contributes to particular aspects of health care problems, the complexity of today's problems requires more than one perspective. As a unique opportunity for cross- disciplinary interaction, we hope this track will give our conference participants and the readers of these proceedings new insights into the problems they face.

This year brought an increase in the number of minitracks in the ITHC track from eight to ten: six continuing from last year and four new ones. The new minitracks cover security and privacy, seniors’ use of health IT, social media, and IT enable coordination. Accordingly, we have the following ten minitracks:

• Global Health IT Strategies
• Health Behavior Change Support Systems
• IT Adoption, Diffusion, and Evaluation in Healthcare
• IT Architectures and Implementations in Healthcare Environments
• IT-Enabled Healthcare Coordination
• Mobile Apps and Wearables for Health Management, Analytics, and Decision Making
• Security and Privacy Challenges for Healthcare
• Senior's Use of Health Information Technology
• Social Media and Healthcare Technology
• User Experience (UX) in Information Systems (IS) for Health and Wellness

The minitrack coordinators provide brief summaries of their minitracks and overviews of the papers in their sessions.

This year also brought a significant increase in the number of accepted papers to the ITNC track. The 62 papers across the minitracks address a wide range of clinical, managerial, technical issues, social, and policy issues, and report on studies from around the world. Papers topics range from early detection of melanoma to management of chronic diseases, from medication management to global data analytics, from education of community health workers to assessing drinking norms. Technologies researched range from electronic medical records to wearable sensors, from social media applications to drones.

An increasing number of papers look at issues around enabling patients to take a greater role in the management of their health using mobile phones, social media, and wearable technologies. Technology adoption and diffusion continue to be of great interest by researchers, with studies covering all levels, from the physician and patient to the national levels. New this year are papers addressing security and privacy issues. Most all of the papers discuss managerial or health policies implications.

This year, the global importance of IT in healthcare is evident in the truly remarkable representation of researchers from around the world contributing to our track. Researchers from outside the United States account for half of the papers in the track, representing 16 countries, and all of the continents with the exception of Antarctica.

Despite the diversity of topics and countries represented in this track, all of the papers have a common focus: How can information technologies be use to improve the quality of care, the efficiency of the delivery of healthcare, and the access to healthcare?

We wish to thank all of the people who have worked so diligently to develop this track; we appreciate the time and effort the minitrack coordinators had to spend over the past year. The high quality collection of papers in the track is the fruit of their efforts. We look forward to the further development of this track. We welcome, and strongly solicit, your participation in this track at future HICSS conferences. Please contact us with your ideas for new minitracks or papers.

We hope you find the proceedings useful and enjoyable.

Track Chairs

William Chismar
Outreach College
University of Hawai'i at Manoa
Sinclair Library, Room 301
2425 Campus Road
Honolulu HI 96822
Tel: (808) 956-8866
Fax: (808) 956-3752
Email: chismar@hawaii.edu

Tom Horan
School of Information Systems and Technology
Claremont Graduate University
30 E 9th St.
Claremont, CA 91711
Tel: (909) 607-9302
Fax: (909) 621-8564
Email: tom.horan@cgu.edu