BackgroundThe world’s population is aging, and with aging population comes an increase of chronic diseases and multimorbidity. At the same time a shortfall of trained health care professionals is anticipated. This raises questions on how to provide the best possible care. The use of Information and communication technology (ICT) and e-health has the potential to address the challenges that healthcare is facing. ICT applications and e-health, such as videophones, telemedicine and mobile devices, can benefit the healthcare system. Nonetheless, ICT is not used to its full potential. One of the key factors is the low adoption rate by nursing professionals. The nursing profession is characterized by teamwork and interdisciplinary collaboration. Nurses often work in nursing teams and collaboration between different disciplines is necessary for providing health care. Thus, collaboration is necessary when implementing ICT innovations.MethodsA systematic literature review was conducted in online databases PubMEd, CINAHL and IEEE, using key words related to innovation, nursing teams and adoption.ResultsThe result of the systematic review is that little is known about the relation between ICT adoption by nurses and the nature of collaboration by nurses in teams and in interdisciplinary networks. This leads to further research questions and a need for further research in this subject.
Abstract: This case study examines the use of an eHealth application for improving preoperative rehabilitation (prehabilitation). We have analysed healthcare professionals' motivators and drivers for adopting eHealth for a surgical procedure at academic medical facilities. The research focused on when and why healthcare professionals are inclined to adopt eHealth applications in their way of working? For this qualitative study, we selected 12 professionals involved in all levels of the organisation and stages of the medical process and conducted semi-structured interviews. Kotter’s transformational change model and the Technology Acceptance Model were used as analytical frameworks for the identification of the motivation of eHealth adoption. The findings suggest that contrary to Kotter’s change model, which argues that adoption of change is based on perceptions and feelings, the healthcare drivers are rational when it comes to deciding whether or not to adopt eHealth apps. This study further elaborates the observation made by the Dutch expertise centre on eHealth, Nictiz, that when the value of an eHealth pplication is clear for a stakeholder, the adoption process accelerates. Analysis of the motivations and drivers of the healthcare professionals show a strong relationship with an evidence-based grounding of usefulness and the responsibility these professionals have towards their patients. We found that healthcare professionals respond to the primary goal of improving healthcare. This is true if the eHealth application will innovate their work, but mainly when the application will improve the patient care they are responsible for. When eHealth applications are implemented, rational facts need to be collected in a study before deployment of eHealth applications on how these applications will improve the patient's health or wellbeing throughout their so-called medical journey for their treatment. Furthermore, the preference to learn about new eHealth applications from someone who speaks from authority through expertise on the subject matter, suggests adoption by healthcare professionals may be accelerated through peers. The result of this study may provide healthcare management with a different approach to their eHealth strategy. Future research is needed to validate the findings in different medical organisational settings such as regional healthcare facilities or for-profit centers which do not necessarily have an innovation focus but are driven by other strategic drivers.
The promotor was Prof. Erik Jan Hultink and copromotors Dr Ellis van den Hende en Dr R. van der Lugt. The title of this dissertation is Armchair travelling the innovation journey. ‘Armchair travelling’ is an expression for travelling to another place, in the comfort of one’s own place. ‘The innovation journey’ is the metaphor Van de Ven and colleagues (1999) have used for travelling the uncharted river of innovation, the highly unpredictable and uncontrollable process of innovation. This research study began with a brief remark from an innovation project leader who sighed after a long and rough journey: ‘had I known this ahead of time…’. From wondering ‘what could he have known ahead of time?’ the immediate question arose: how do such innovation journeys develop? How do other innovation project leaders lead the innovation journey? And could I find examples of studies about these experiences from an innovation project leader’s perspective that could have helped the sighing innovation project leader to have known at least some of the challenges ahead of time? This dissertation is the result of that quest, as we do know relatively little how this process of the innovation project leader unfolds over time. The aim of this study is to increase our understanding of how innovation project leaders lead their innovation journeys over time, and to capture those experiences that could be a source for others to learn from and to be better prepared. This research project takes a process approach. Such an approach is different from a variance study. Process thinking takes into account how and why things – people, organizations, strategies, environments – change, act and evolve over time, expressed by Andrew Pettigrew (1992, p.10) as catching “reality in flight”.
MULTIFILE
Currently, many novel innovative materials and manufacturing methods are developed in order to help businesses for improving their performance, developing new products, and also implement more sustainability into their current processes. For this purpose, additive manufacturing (AM) technology has been very successful in the fabrication of complex shape products, that cannot be manufactured by conventional approaches, and also using novel high-performance materials with more sustainable aspects. The application of bioplastics and biopolymers is growing fast in the 3D printing industry. Since they are good alternatives to petrochemical products that have negative impacts on environments, therefore, many research studies have been exploring and developing new biopolymers and 3D printing techniques for the fabrication of fully biobased products. In particular, 3D printing of smart biopolymers has attracted much attention due to the specific functionalities of the fabricated products. They have a unique ability to recover their original shape from a significant plastic deformation when a particular stimulus, like temperature, is applied. Therefore, the application of smart biopolymers in the 3D printing process gives an additional dimension (time) to this technology, called four-dimensional (4D) printing, and it highlights the promise for further development of 4D printing in the design and fabrication of smart structures and products. This performance in combination with specific complex designs, such as sandwich structures, allows the production of for example impact-resistant, stress-absorber panels, lightweight products for sporting goods, automotive, or many other applications. In this study, an experimental approach will be applied to fabricate a suitable biopolymer with a shape memory behavior and also investigate the impact of design and operational parameters on the functionality of 4D printed sandwich structures, especially, stress absorption rate and shape recovery behavior.
The scientific publishing industry is rapidly transitioning towards information analytics. This shift is disproportionately benefiting large companies. These can afford to deploy digital technologies like knowledge graphs that can index their contents and create advanced search engines. Small and medium publishing enterprises, instead, often lack the resources to fully embrace such digital transformations. This divide is acutely felt in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Scholars from these disciplines are largely unable to benefit from modern scientific search engines, because their publishing ecosystem is made of many specialized businesses which cannot, individually, develop comparable services. We propose to start bridging this gap by democratizing access to knowledge graphs – the technology underpinning modern scientific search engines – for small and medium publishers in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Their contents, largely made of books, already contain rich, structured information – such as references and indexes – which can be automatically mined and interlinked. We plan to develop a framework for extracting structured information and create knowledge graphs from it. We will as much as possible consolidate existing proven technologies into a single codebase, instead of reinventing the wheel. Our consortium is a collaboration of researchers in scientific information mining, Odoma, an AI consulting company, and the publisher Brill, sharing its data and expertise. Brill will be able to immediately put to use the project results to improve its internal processes and services. Furthermore, our results will be published in open source with a commercial-friendly license, in order to foster the adoption and future development of the framework by other publishers. Ultimately, our proposal is an example of industry innovation where, instead of scaling-up, we scale wide by creating a common resource which many small players can then use and expand upon.
HTIT-EN (Hospitality, Tourism, Innovation & Technology Experts Network) unites professors and researchers from five leading academies in hospitality and tourism (Hotelschool The Hague, Hotel Management School Maastricht / Zuyd, Breda University of Applied Sciences, Saxion Hogeschool, NHL Stenden). Our primary goal is to coordinate efforts in setting a joint research agenda, focused on the overall question: "How can the Dutch hospitality and tourism sector, which has a profound societal presence and encompasses a diverse range of workers and stakeholders, leverage its transversal character to generate extensive societal impact through the utilization of emerging technological innovations?" Early industry adoption of emerging technologies, including robotics, immersive experiences, and artificial intelligence, make hospitality and tourism ideal contexts to serve as a catalyst for innovation and societal impact. By integrating complementary expertise of the leading professors in areas like strategic foresight, disruptive transformations, technology management, and digital transformation and by engaging in collaboration with external knowledge institutions (MBO, HBO, WO), the Centre of Expertise Leisure, Tourism & Hospitality, business professionals, and industry associations, our vision is to acknowledge the hospitality and tourism industry as a dynamic basis for generating technology-driven, positive societal change. HTIT-EN's ultimate goal is to rise to the status of a globally renowned knowledge platform, specializing in technological innovation within the domain of hospitality and tourism, within the next 5 years. To achieve this aspiration, we are committed to fostering collaboration and aligning expertise across the participating institutions, as well as extending an invitation to additional partners from both the practical and academic fields related to this network. This collaborative effort will enable us to leverage each other’s expertise and resources and fully utilize the transversal characteristics of the Dutch tourism and hospitality industry, developing it to a catalyst for technology-driven innovation with wide and lasting societal implications across the Netherlands.
