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Managerial decision making problems in the healthcare industry often involve considerations of customer occupancy by time of day and day of week. Through a case study at a large tertiary care hospital, we discuss a number of issues that arise in analyzing occupancy data which have implications for design of healthcare operations oriented data warehouses and analysis tools. We offer practical solutions to these problems including a transaction oriented database design, a general database framework and software tool for analysis of occupancy related data and a method for simulating entity flow from the data mart.

The management of competing stakeholders has emerged as an important topic for formulating business strategies. This is especially the case in the complicated business environment like the healthcare IT (Information Technology) industries. This paper proposes a methodology to formulate business strategies based on stakeholders' demands. Our methodology begins with the understanding of stakeholders' demands. This understanding is particularly useful for businesses with conflicting stakeholders. Our methodology consists of four phases: current business analysis, strategy development, strategy evaluation, and strategy implementation. Power, legitimacy, urgency, interdependence, cooperation, and conflict are used as stakeholders related variables. Strategic alternatives are derived on the basis of stakeholders' demands. Resolution, replacement, integration, reaggregation, and balance guidelines are employed for this derivation. Strategic alternatives are then evaluated according to a business social performance index. In order to demonstrate the practical usefulness of our methodology, three business cases for the Korean healthcare IT industry are illustrated. The case results imply that our methodology is useful for strategy formulation, especially in the case of competing business stakeholders.

Research in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in the healthcare sector is in a developing stage and demands further research to get more in-depth insight. We present a comprehensive model to develop and prioritize CRM readiness factors in hospitals using fuzzy DEMATEL-ANP, which helps top managers allocate their limited resources to enhance the required infrastructure for a CRM system. After extracting proper readiness factors, multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) techniques are applied to assess CRM readiness. First, using the fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory approach (DEMATEL), the interdependent relations amongst criteria are designated. Second, the fuzzy analytic network process (ANP) is applied to weigh the sub-criteria. Top management support and structure are the most critical factors which play an essential role in the CRM readiness concept. The importance of top management’s factor has been investigated in many previous works. The structure has been neglected in the previous studies; however, our results demonstrate that it should be considered a crucial factor. This study’s findings can facilitate the CRM system’s adoption process to be employed by decision-makers within hospitals to mitigate the failure rate of the CRM system’s implementation, leading to providing plenty of advantages to the patient association and hospitals. The results of this paper can also have a contribution to the implementation of CRM and artificial intelligence (AI) as an innovative strategy in organizations, particularly hospitals.

This chapter addresses the key issues impacting the adoption of information technology (IT) in healthcare organizations. Four case studies were developed from different hospitals through a series of in-depth interviews to determine the factors affecting their IT adoption. The findings reveal that, at the organization level, these hospitals primarily make decisions to adopt new technologies based on project-related costs. At the individual level, the complications in the implementation process play a major role as they are influenced by human-related issues. Apart from the identification of key factors from the case studies, the latter part of this chapter also presents the mental framework of IT adoption for healthcare organizations developed based on the technology acceptance model.

Healthcare supply chain management differs from other applications in terms of its key elements. The misalignment, high costs for healthcare providers and heavy dependence on third parties, distributors, and manufacturers are the main trouble making issues for the healthcare supply chain. At the same time, some of the supply chain components of the health sector have a different position compared to the other materials that are taking place in the other supply chains. In particular, the specific consumables used in the surgical operations bear a significant importance in terms of the usage and the costs. In some cases, the doctors may not have a strict opinion on the exact quantity of the consumables they will use during the operation before starting it. On the other hand, it is not always possible to have all these materials in the stock because of their high cost. Moreover, due to the inefficiencies in the social security system in Turkey, the social security institutions do not always accept to pay the price of the materials used. Worse still, the related information generally reaches with a significant delay to the hospital management.

A major challenge for business information systems (BIS) design and management within healthcare units is the need to accommodate the complexity and changeability in terms of their clinical protocols, technology, business and administrative processes. Interoperability is the response to these demands, but there are many ways to achieve an “interoperable” information system. In this chapter we address the requirements of a healthcare interoperability framework to enhance enterprise architecture interoperability of healthcare organizations, while maintaining the organization's technical and operational environments, and installed technology. The healthcare interoperability framework is grounded on the combination of model driven architecture (MDA) and service-oriented architecture (SOA) technologies.

The main argument in this chapter is to advocate the role of chief information officer (CIO) in dealing with challenges posed by the need to achieve BIS grounded on interoperability at the different layers, and in developing and executing an interoperability strategy, which must be aligned with the health organization's business, administrative, and clinical processes. A case study of the Hospital de São Sebastião is described demonstrating the critical role of the CIO for the development of an interoperable platform.