AIS SIGHealth

Call for papers: Journal of the Association for Information Systems (JAIS)

Special Issue on: Health Care IT…Process, People and Patients December 2010

Guest Editors
Fay Cobb Payton Fay_payton@ncsu.edu
Guy Pare guy.pare@hec.ca
Madhu Reddy mreddy@ist.psu.edu
Cynthia LeRouge lerougec@slu.edu

Effectiveness and efficiency of Health Care Information and Management Systems (HIS) will become one of the main challenges in health care in the next decade. According to the World Health Organization (WHO, 2006), significant improvements are being made in healthcare due to information and communication technologies (ICT). eHealth innovations like electronic health records, computer-assisted prescription systems and clinical databases are transforming health today, and hold even greater promise for the future. ICT’s support clinical care, patient education, facilitates scientific advancement of the field, and improves the work flow of various functions in the healthcare. Success in utilizing these systems is predicated on such issues as understanding the wide array of users and their unique needs while developing systems, investigating, documenting and analyzing the impact of eHealth on the users and the broader community of service providers and promoting better understanding of the impact of better information on health service outcomes by disseminating information and improving accessibility to health care information.

The HIS domain is intrinsically interdisciplinary, and the Information Systems (IS) community has a key role in its advancement. The IS discipline is well positioned to conduct research that contributes toward the health care goals of improving the capabilities of physicians, clinical staff, health care consumers and public health workers by systematically investigating the impact of context on existing IS theories and models as they relate to health care issues. In addition, the nuances in the health care context provide a rich environment from which to develop new theory as well as extend the existing IS theories (Chiasson and Davidson, 2007). Yet, little research in top-tier IS journals currently is directed toward Health Care Information and Management Systems (HIS). Existing health care and medical informatics journals make valuable contributions to advancing the design and use of ICT in the health care context. In particular. they have served well in documenting existing practices and experiences and results of the use of technology but generally they do not contribute to significant theory building and in particular, formulation of new IS theories. Applying strong theoretical perspectives into existing and emerging electronic practices of HIS will facilitate the opening of the black box of technology and leading to a better understanding of how, why and under what circumstances theory can guide the implementation, use and acceptance of ICTs in the health care context. Furthermore, new theories are needed in accounting for emerging and new phenomena in these environments and to inform IS theory development in general.

In this special issue JAIS seeks to address the future research challenges of HIS through application and extension of IS and related theories. This special issue will give particular consideration to articles that integrate literatures, approaches, and findings related to technology in health care across related disciplines. To this end the special issue will solicit high quality Healthcare-IS papers that apply and extend theory within and across information systems, sociology, health informatics, medicine, health policy research, health economics and other fields that are rarely bridged in published studies. We seek open dialogue and knowledge sharing among these disciplines. Recent special issues in leading IS journals such as ISR (http://www.informs.org/site/ISR/article.php?id=124) address some health informatics topics. By advocating multi-disciplinary and integrated approach, the special issue hopes to expand and draw upon these studies by carefully incorporating ideas and theories from related disciplines. To facilitate this integrated perspective, the editorial board of this special issue represents researchers from multiple disciplines that have an interest in health information systems. Therefore, each submitted paper will be subjected to a review by a review panel composing of scholars from information system and other related disciplines, when appropriate.

Papers can address any issue related to users, design, acceptance, use, workflow, organizational structure, evaluation, cost benefits, and diffusion of HIS. The issue also solicits papers that investigate human behaviours toward the use of information technology within a health care environment, benefits and impacts of information technology, organizational change management and human and ethical concerns related to into information technology projects in health care. Theory development using techniques such as grounded theory are welcome as well as papers that advance and offer new insights into existing theories such as those in the compendium of theories used in IS research ( see e.g. at http://www.istheory.yorku.ca/). HIS related theoretical pursuits can include, but are not limited to the following:
– Regional and Community Health Information Networks
– Telemedicine and Tele-Applications
– Socio-technical aspects of HIS
– Electronic Medical Records
– Mobile Devices and Ubiquitous Computing
– Data Quality and Management of Clinical Data
– HIS Technology Innovations in a Global Context
– Use of Technology to Address Public Health and Policy
– Health Care Website Assessment and Effectiveness
– Consumer Centric Design of Home Health Innovations
– Patient-centered applications impacting patient/physician interaction
– HIS for patient support and social inclusion
– Human-Computer Interaction and Usability Issues in HIS

The manuscripts can utilize diverse research approaches, including conceptual or theoretical argument as well as rigorous empirical work that advance or propose theory using qualitative and/or quantitative research methods (including case studies and surveys). All contributions will be subjected to a double-blind review process in line with JAIS editorial policies.

By collaborating with scholars coming from multiple organizations, the special issue seeks also to capture the interest of national and international health care IS scholars from a myriad of domains, including medical schools, nursing, social sciences, informatics, public policy, communications, etc. Therefore, the AIS Special Interest Group on Healthcare (http://www.aissighealth.com/wordpress/?page_id=2), American Medical Informatics Association’s People and Organizational Issues (POI) Workgroup (http://www.amia.org/mbrcenter/wg/poi/index.asp), International Medical Informatics Association’s Organizational and Social Issues Workgroup (http://www.imia.org/Action.Lasso?-Response=WG_profile.html&-Search=Action&-Table=CGI&-MaxRecords=1&-SkipRecords=12&-Database=organizations&-SortField=workgroup_SIG&-SortOrder=ascending&type=WGSIG) and IEEE Medical Technology Workgroup (http://www.ieeeusa.org/volunteers/committees/mtpc/) have agreed to serve as sponsors of this special issue and will provide excellent sources for paper submissions and reviewers.

The topics appropriate for the submission will be discussed at ECIS 2008 in Galway during SIG-Health sponsored activities. POI and IEEE will promote the special issue via their organizational websites and ongoing activities, such as tele-meetings. The potential submissions can be prepared by utilizing the AMCIS 2008 SIG-Health track in Toronto which consists of 7 mini tracks. The mini track chairs will be asked to select conference papers that could be further developed for consideration in this special issue. During the annual SIG-Health meeting at AMCIS 2008, this call will be discussed and potential paper submissions will be discussed. Potential authors are invited to attend this meeting.

Authors are strongly encouraged to contact the special issue editors via e-mail to ascertain fit of their work with the special issue in advance of the submission deadline. Interested authors should submit a one-page abstract of their proposed paper to Fay Cobb Payton at fay_payton@ncsu.edu by August 1, 2009. Full-paper submissions should be between 4000-6000 words in length. Submissions should include a separate title page giving the names and addresses of the authors. Manuscripts must be sent electronically to fay_payton@ncsu.edu, together with 1-5 keywords and an abstract of approximately 150-200 words. Please check the website at http://jais.aisnet.org/format.asp for author guidelines including format and style.

Papers will receive an initial screening, and only those papers that are deemed to have a reasonable chance of acceptance in an accelerated review process will remain under consideration.

IMPORTANT DEADLINES

AMCIS 2008 SIG-Health Annual Meeting will discuss Special issue and expectations
August 2009 Abstract Deadline
January 15, 2010 Final submissions
April 30, 2010 Review decisions
August 1, 2010 Revised papers due
October 2010 Notification of acceptance
December 2010 Camera ready submission

Editorial board of the special issue:

Ronald Spanjers, Catharina Hospital – Netherlands
Vance Wilson, The University of Toledo
Helen Richardson, University of Salford
Nilmini Wickramasinghe, Illinois Institute of Technology
Bonnie Kaplan, Yale University
Mike Chiasson, Lancaster University
Philip Musa, University of Alabama-Birmingham
Monica Garfield, Bentley College
Bengisu Tulu, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Ton Spil, BBT University of Twente, The Netherlands
Awie Leonard, University of Pretoria, South Africa
Sharon Tan, The National University of Singapore
Francis Lau, University of Victoria, BC, Canada
Samir Chatterjee, Claremont Graduate University
Donal Flynn, University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology
Eric Monteiro, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Pascale Lehoux, University of Montreal, Canada
Nelson King, American University of Beirut
Wendy Currie, University of Warwick
Patrick Y.K. Chau, The University of Hong Kong

References
Chiasson, M. W., & Davidson, E. (2004). Pushing the contextual envelope: Developing and diffusing IS theory for health information systems research. Information and Organization, 14(3), 155-188.

About JAIS (See http://jais.aisnet.org/)

The Journal of the Association for Information Systems (Journal of AIS), the flagship research journal of the Association for Information Systems, publishes the highest quality scholarship in the field of information systems. JAIS is inclusive in scope and covers all aspects of Information Systems and Information Technology. The Journal publishes rigorously developed and forward looking conceptual and empirical contributions. The Journal encourages multidisciplinary and nontraditional approaches. The journal’s editor is Kalle Lyytinen (Case Western Reserve University).
JAIS distribution and readership information
JAIS enjoys wide and extensive readership and large visibility in the global IS community. Being an electronic journal we have real time information on our readership size and access patterns, and the geographical distribution of our patrons. During 2006 JAIS website received on average c.a. 700 visits by day and on average 22 000 visits per month. The number of visitors has been growing by 20% since 2005. The most popular articles reach over 1000 downloads/year.

The reach of JAIS readership is global and covers most countries and areas in the world. Though U.S. dominates access statistics and download accounting for c.a. 70% of the visits JAIS enjoys significant interest in Australia, Canada, France, United Kingdom, China, Malaysia, Singapore among others.
JAIS ranking information
During its short life time – the first JAIS article was published in 2000- JAIS has gained a strong reputation of publishing high quality theory focused articles in Information Systems field. This is well testified by the rapidly increased rankings and many recent decisions by some of the leading departments in our field to rank JAIS as an “A” outlet. The journal has also been nimble in responding to new intellectual needs within the community as recent publications in digital divide or the special issue in the Research Perspectives on Technology Acceptance Model testify. The number of submissions, the number of published articles and the number of readers have been marked by a steady growth so that in all respects. JAIS already qualifies as an A level journal (see below).

Some statistics will suffice here. The acceptance rate of JAIS is currently less than 12% which is on a par with other major outlets in the field. It is indexed by all major indexing services including ISI (Thompson) and EBSCO. Our submissions have been growing at the rate of 30-40% per year and are currently at the level c.a. 200 manuscript / year. This enables us to publish high quality articles with a steady flow. The editorial board is composed of world class scholars who cover all major topic in information systems and have extensive editorial experience. The review policies and practices are similar to those followed in any top level journals and JAIS seeks to promote bold and rigorous scholarship.

Anne-Wil Harzing (http://www.harzing.com/jql.htm) has aggregated multiple (16) measures on quality for academic journals in the field of business and management. In this ranking JAIS is included and is rated as B on the Wien Journal Rating 2001, A according to the Association of Professors of Mgmt in German speaking countries, and 3 with the Cranfield University School of Management. When measured by the currently used top level journal lists used in making tenure and promotion decisions in the U.S. JAIS ranks on the 9th place among all the IS journals. When measured by the quality of the departments from which the authors of JAIS articles come from JAIS ranks currently as the 3rd among all IS journals (see Thomas W. Ferratt, Michael F. Gorman, John J. Kanet, Wm. David Salisbury: “IS Journal Quality Assessment Using the Author Affiliation Index” CAIS, Volume 19 Article 34 June, 2007) Overall, JAIS fares increasingly well in rankings, if one takes into account the age of the journal (see http://www.aisworld.org/csaunders/rankings.htm).

Several factors that have contributed to rapidly improved rankings including low acceptance rates and the quality and academic weight of the editorial board, and the quality of reviewing.
Editorial Activities:
Fay Cobb Payton is an Associate Professor of IS/IT at North Carolina State University. She serves as the Health Care IT section editor for African Journal of Information Systems, a publication outlet supported by the National Science Foundation. She is currently the Vice Chair of SIG-Health. She served as the Information Systems co-track chair for the 2004 Decision Science Institute where she is a member of the International Strategic Planning Committee. Dr. Payton served as an Associate Editor for the IT in Underserved Communities Track for the 2006 ICIS Conference and 2004 AMCIS Conference IS Social Issues Track and the 2002 Healthcare IT HICSS Minitrack. She is serving as the track chair for the 2008 IFIP WG9.4 in Pretoria, South Africa. Dr. Payton’s health care publications have appeared in the Communication of the ACM, Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, IEEE Transactions, Information and Management, Computers and Society, Health Care Management Review and others.
Cynthia LeRouge is an Associate Professor at St. Louis University in the Decision Sciences and Information Technology Management Department. She served as a special guest editor experience with HRMJ (an A level management journal) and EJIS. The EJIS Special Health Care IT issue was done in less than 12 months with over 69 submissions. Dr. LeRouge has co-chaired health care mini-tracks for the AMCIS, ISOneWorld, and HICSS conferences. She has also served as a special guest editor for the European Journal of Information Systems’ special issue on Health Information Systems Research, Revelations and Visions and the Human Resources Management Journal special issue on Managing the IT Workforce. Her healthcare research has been published or is forthcoming in Decision Support Systems, International Journal of Healthcare Technology and Management, Communications of the Association of Information Systems and others. For the last year, she has actively worked as an executive board member of the Association of Information Systems special interest group for Healthcare Research (SIG-Health) and currently serves as the Chair of SIG-Health.

Guy Pare is a Professor of Information Technologies at HEC Montréal and CANADA Research Chair in Information Technology in Health Care. He received his Ph.D. in Management Information Systems from Florida International University. Guy recently served as Associate Editor for MIS Quarterly and is currently a member of the advisory board at the International Journal of Health Information Systems and Informatics. His current research interests involve the impacts of telehomecare applications and electronic medical records and the barriers to adoption, implementation and sustainability of various e-health applications in the health care system. Journals where his publications have recently appeared include Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, Methods of Information in Medicine, International Journal of Medical Informatics, Telemedicine and e-health, Disease Management and Health Outcomes, Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, and Health Care Management Review.
Madhu Reddy is an Assistant Professor in the College of Information Science and Technology at Penn State University. He is the recipient of the 2002 Diana Forsythe Award given by the American Medical Informatics Association for the best paper of the year at the intersection of medical informatics and social sciences. Dr. Reddy currently chairs the Diana Forsythe Award Committee and is the chair of the IMIA Workgroup on Organizational and Social Issues. He has also served as a reviewer for journals in a variety of disciplines including medical informatics (International Journal of Medical Informatics, Journal of American Medical Informatics Association, Journal of Biomedical informatics), information systems (Information Systems Review, Journal of Information, Technology, and People), and human-computer interaction (International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, Journal of Computer Supported Cooperative Work).