Annotated Bibliography on Healthcare and Technology

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Many professors require that you write an annotated bibliography with large papers you’re assigned to complete. As such, it is imperative that you follow explicit instructions of doing so and remember that writing these types of documents is different than writing essays or research papers. This sample annotated bibliography showcases one of the custom writing services offered by Ultius.

Healthcare and Technology: Intersecting Studies?

Chau, P.Y.K., & Jen-Hwa Hu, P. (2002). Investigating healthcare professionals' decisions to accept telemedicine technology: an empirical test of competing theories. Information and Management 39: 297-311. ETIDWeb.  

Summary: In this article, the authors studied how healthcare professionals accepted and incorporated telemedicine technology into their practices. Rather than the practical matter of how telemedicine is actually used, this source chose to focus on a managerial perspective.  It examined how physicians in the upper levels of healthcare management considered information management and telemedicine and how they presented it to their employees.  It also discussed managerial tactics that could be used to help integrate telemedicine technology into professional healthcare environments that were reluctant to accept this new development.  The study found that healthcare professionals were different from normal technology consumers in that usefulness and economy were significantly more important than appearance and user-friendliness.  It also found that, from a managerial standpoint, it was important to present the new technology as being helpful and welcome for it to be accepted by staff.

Assessment: This source helps understand the ways that telemedicine is making its way into modern healthcare.  It demonstrates the different parts of the profession that have to be considered in a discussion about telemedicine and the likely obstacles that will be faced by telemedicine technology.  It also helps understand the difference between a professional healthcare environment and other technology consumer environments like the cellular industry, which is important in understanding what is likely to be expected of telemedicine by those who will use it most.

Hu, P. J., Chau, P. Y., Sheng, O. R., & Tam, K. Y. (1999). Examining the technology acceptance model using physician acceptance of telemedicine technology. Journal of Management Information Systems, 16, 91-112. Retrieved November 10, 2012, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40398433

Summary: This article addressed the recently expanded role of information technology (IT) in healthcare with a particular focus on telemedicine applications.  It focused on the use of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to predict the integration of telemedicine into existing healthcare systems.  The article’s literature review was dedicated to explaining the background of TAM and why it was chosen as the research model for telemedicine.  Also, the study was conducted based on the premise that telemedicine is still in the early stages and so attention was paid more to the acceptance of it as a concept than specific applications of it.  The study’s conclusion regarding telemedicine was that it would require positive marketing from management to be accepted into the healthcare profession.

Assessment: The role of telemedicine in this article was more as a context than as a subject of study. TAM was the real purpose of the study, and the use of TAM in predicting technology applications in healthcare. But the article did discuss attitudes toward telemedicine which could be used in a further discussion of telemedicine itself. Further interpretation would be needed to apply this article directly to a discussion of telemedicine, because of the authors’ focus on TAM instead of telemedicine itself.

Leong, J. R, Sirio, C.A &  Rotondi, A.J. (2005) ICU program favorably affects clinical and economic outcomes. Critical Care 9: n. pag. BioMedCentral.

Summary: This study used direct data to determine whether or not telemedicine was helpful in a clinical environment and what its impact on a professional healthcare environment’s finances is.  A centralized, off-site monitoring facility was established to manage two ICUs and over 2,000 patients over the course of six months.  The clinical statistics and financial status of those six months were compared to the previous six months to determine the outcome.  The study concluded that the telemedicine management of the ICUs improved cost and performance in both categories.  The study also allowed that by setting up the study and providing the technology required for the telemedicine, the ICUs may have improved their performance without the off-site management.

Assessment: As an example of actual telemedicine in practice, this source provides a valuable perspective for any discussion of telemedicine technology.  It serves as a specific and practical example of how telemedicine can be applied and the success of the study demonstrates that it is a thing worth pursuing.  The central point of the telemedicine in this study was to provide the attention of intensivists to the ICUs.  As is stated in the study, this would be the primary function of telemedicine in this case and the technology could serve to provide intensivist attention to small, remote, or less wealthy healthcare facilities.

Mair, F., & Whitten, P. (2000). Systematic review of studies of patient satisfaction with telemedicine. British Medical Journal, 320, 1517-1520. Retrieved November 10, 2012, from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc27397/

Summary: This article was an extensive literature review of studies intended to identify customer satisfaction with various applications of telemedicine.  Mair’s and Whitten’s (2000) thesis was to demonstrate that existing research did not address the reasons for the satisfaction or dissatisfaction that customers felt toward telemedicine and that the existing studies were methodologically unsuited to proving satisfaction or dissatisfaction and that the quality of patient and nursing care remained paramount.  The material considered came from specific databases with specific ranges of dates and the same search string was used for each database.  The only studies considered were clinical trials that focused on actual patient usage.  The conclusion of the article, based on the evidence that fit its criteria, was that telemedicine was acceptable to patients, but also that the result was unreliable because the studies were poorly conducted.

Assessment: The primary contribution of this source to a discussion about telemedicine would be in describing the way that telemedicine and other information technologies in medicine have been approached in the past and how that has changed in recent years.  Important questions about previous material were raised in the article and advice about future studies was given.  These two perspectives could serve to help identify the validity of other sources as well as focus the argument of any discussion about telemedicine.

Whitten, P. S., Mair, F. S., Haycox, A., May, C. R., Williams, T. L., & Hellmich, S. (2002). Systematic review of cost effectiveness studies of telemedicine interventions. British Medical Journal, 324, 1434-1437. Retrieved November 10, 2012, from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC115857/

Summary: According to this article, one of the supposed primary benefits of telemedicine was that its economic advantages.  To determine whether or not this was true, the authors of this article organized two review teams with different emphases that reviewed the same source material, one organizing and classifying the sources and the other qualifying and reviewing the sources.  The results of the two teams were shared for form this article.  The two-part study concluded that there was little to no evidence supporting the claim that telemedicine presented any economic advantages.  It also concluded that future studies focused more exclusively on cost analysis would be necessary to form an actual response to the question, rather than discounting the claim based on lack of evidence.

Assessment: This article is more about the research methods of the articles it reviews than about telemedicine, but it can serve a discussion about telemedicine all the same.  It raised an important point that presuppositions about telemedicine should not be taken for granted and that if it does have advantages, they are likely not the ones originally claimed.  This source could also help provide further insight into the kinds of studies that have already been done regarding telemedicine and the kinds of questions that are yet to be raised.