Information Technology in Healthcare

Now in its 22nd 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 following fourteen minitracks:

• Big-Data on Healthcare Application
• Data-Driven Smart Health in Asia Pacific
• Design and Application of Body Sensor Systems in Healthcare
• Health Behavior Change Support Systems
• Health Information Behavior and Activity Tracking Technology
• ICT-enabled Self-management of Chronic Diseases and Conditions
• IT Innovations to Overcome Health Disparities
• IT Adoption, Diffusion and Evaluation in Healthcare
• IT Architecture and Implementations in Healthcare Environments
• Optimization of and the Use of IT for Healthcare Processes
• Personal Health and Wellness Management with Technologies
• Senior's Use of Digital Resources
• Social Media & Healthcare Technology
• Unintended Negative Consequences of IT Implementations in Healthcare

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

Focusing on management issues, the long running IT Adoption, Diffusion and Evaluation in Healthcare minitrack remains the largest of the minitracks with 16% of the papers in the track. But, newer minitracks are focusing on actual and potential impacts of technologies on personal health management, distributed and pervasive technologies, social media, and data analytics made possible by access to large, distributed data sets. The newest minitrack focuses on unintended negative consequences resulting from IT implementations.

The 69 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 diabetes, autism, schizophrenia, Parkinson disease, musculoskeletal disorders, malaria, anxiety, and respiratory conditions. Technologies include virtual reality, body sensors, smart gloves, radar-based room sensors, machine learning, and social media.

Levels of analysis range from individuals, to healthcare organizations, to nations, with studies from across Europe, North America, and China. Many of the papers investigate how technologies can improve communications among and between clinicians and patients. The papers reflect general trends in healthcare: greater availability and use of data, greater interoperability of systems, and greater roles for patients in the healthcare process.

Despite the diversity of topics and countries represented in this track, all of the papers have a common focus: how can information technologies be used 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 our colleagues 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, as healthcare and the use of IT improve it remains a paramount issue, nationally and internationally. 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