OBJECTIVES In order to adopt and activate telemedicine it is necessary to survey how medical staff, who are providers of medical service, and consumers, who are the service targets, perceive information and communication technology (ICT)-based healthcare service. METHODS This study surveyed the awareness and acceptability of ICT-based healthcare by involving service targets, specifically work...

BACKGROUND Patient satisfaction is considered an essential component of healthcare services evaluation and an additional indicator of the quality of healthcare. Moreover, patient satisfaction may also predict health-related behaviours of patients such as adherence to treatment and recommendations. AIMS The study aimed to assess patients' level of satisfaction with public healthcare services a...

The urgent needs of healthcare assistant for elderly senior citizens increase rapidly. This paper presents an e-service design on stroke-precaution for senior citizens, followed by its implementation and evaluation. The healthcare support e-service design focuses on the aging problems including the degeneracy of memory and vision as well as the recession of attention. These physiological proble...

For the last two decades, the healthcare industry has gone through changes in healthcare service deliveries. These changes are a response to: higher service expectations from patients, ever-advancing technology, greater access to health information through the internet and the digital media, and a holistic approach to health and well-being concerns (Francis, 2010). In this competitive healthcar...

OBJECTIVE Describing profiles for professional psychiatric service categories in Ribeirão Preto. METHOD This was an exploratory study of 8 services (3 hospitals and 5 extra-hospital facilities). Data was collected using questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with professionals who worked for all these services. RESULTS 74 % of the professionals working for the eight services investig...

The healthcare context is characterized with new developments, technologies, ideas and expectations that are continually reshaping the frontline of care delivery. Mannion and Exworthy identify two key factors driving this complexity, ‘standardization’ and ‘customization,’ and their apparent resulting paradox to be negotiated by healthcare professionals, managers and policy makers. However, whil...

Supply Chain Forum An International Journal Vol. 5 N°2 2004 www.supplychain-forum.com Management is on the verge of a major breakthrough in understanding how industrial company success depends on the interaction between the flow of information, materials, money, manpower, and capital equipment (Forrester, 1958). Forrester’s words seem to have taken four decades to materialize. The long-awaited ...

BACKGROUND The main purpose of this study was to identify factors that influence healthcare quality in the Iranian context. METHODS Exploratory in-depth individual and focus group interviews were conducted with 222 healthcare stakeholders including healthcare providers, managers, policy-makers, and payers to identify factors affecting the quality of healthcare services provided in Iranian hea...

Service negotiation is a complex activity, especially in complex domains such as healthcare. The provision of healthcare services typically involves the coordination of several professionals with different skills and locations. There is usually negotiation between healthcare service providers as different services have specific constraints, variables, and features (scheduling, waiting lists, av...