Information Technology in Healthcare

Now in its 23rd year, the Information Technology in Healthcare track at HICSS continues to evolve and expand. However, the track retains its original mission: To serve 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.

The cross-disciplinary nature of the track is clearly evident in the set of minitracks and in the papers within the minitracks. This year we have the record fifteen minitracks, 11 returning minitracks and 4 new ones (noted with a *).

• Big-Data on Healthcare Application
• Health Behavior Change Support Systems
• ICT-enabled Self-management of Chronic Diseases and Conditions
• Implementation of Body Sensor Systems in Healthcare Practice
• IT Adoption, Diffusion and Evaluation in Healthcare
• IT Architecture and Implementations in Healthcare Environments
• Optimization, Simulation and IT for Healthcare Processes and Services
• Personal Health and Wellness Management with Technologies
• Security and Privacy Challenges for Healthcare*
• Self-Quantification with Activity Tracking Technologies: Opportunities and Threats*
• Senior's Use of Digital Resources
• Social Media and Healthcare Technology
• Ubiquitous and Comprehensive Healthcare: Expanding Technologies and Systems to Enable New Delivery Models*
• Unintended Negative Consequences of IT Implementations in Healthcare
• Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality in Healthcare*

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

As evident by the names of the minitracks, the track covers a very diverse set of IT and health management related issues. Based on the number of papers, the IT Adoption, Diffusion, and Evaluation minitrack—one of the longest running minitracks—continues to be the largest. It is followed by the Big-Data, Personal Health and Wellness Management, and the Health Behavior Change Support Systems minitracks. The popularity of these last three reflects the growing importance of analysis of the ever increasing availability of data, and the continuing trend of greater patient involvement in the healthcare process.

The 63 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. Health conditions investigated include depression, dementia, diabetes, schizophrenia, Parkinson disease, cancer, opioid addiction, and epilepsy. The timing of the paper submissions in early 2020 obviously precluded studies of the COVID-19. Managerial clinical issues addressed include systems development and implementation, hospital management, ER operations, drug management, and health behavior changes.

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 improve the overall health and wellness of individuals and populations?

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 of the pandemic. 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.

William G. Chismar
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
chismar@hawaii.edu

Thomas A. Horan
University of Redlands
Thomas.Horan@redlands.edu