Context Sensitive Decision Support Systems

In today's rapidly changing educational and business climate, organizational transformation has become a key area of development for many different and varied environments, both commercial and academic. This book addresses issues related to developing Decision Support Systems (DSS) which are sensitive and adaptable to different contexts and evolving technical and work environments. In addition to addressing the various cultural/social, organizational/individual, task/technology contexts of DSS, the book also anchors these discussions in a practical context, drawing on case studies to illustrate the theoretical dimensions stressed. This book includes the following issues: Frameworks for understanding the contexts and environments of decision support; Cases and issues in decision support and organizational transformation in context; An inter-disciplinary analysis of DSS, covering a wide variety of situations; and Real-world applications of DSS . It contains selected papers presented and discussed at the International Conference on Context-Sensitive Decision Support Systems, which was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) and held in Bled, Slovenia in July 1998. The book will prove invaluable to anyone working in information and decision support systems development, management, implementation and evaluation, as well as to researchers/practitioners in organizational analysis and development, management and business administration, sociology and psychology of organizations, human relations and human factors management.

In today's rapidly changing educational and business climate, organizational transformation has become a key area of development for many different and varied environments, both commercial and academic. This book addresses issues related to developing Decision Support Systems (DSS) which are sensitive and adaptable to different contexts and evolving technical and work environments. In addition to addressing the various cultural/social, organizational/individual, task/technology contexts of DSS, the book also anchors these discussions in a practical context, drawing on case studies to illustrate the theoretical dimensions stressed. This book includes the following issues: Frameworks for understanding the contexts and environments of decision support; Cases and issues in decision support and organizational transformation in context; An inter-disciplinary analysis of DSS, covering a wide variety of situations; and Real-world applications of DSS . It contains selected papers presented and discussed at the International Conference on Context-Sensitive Decision Support Systems, which was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) and held in Bled, Slovenia in July 1998. The book will prove invaluable to anyone working in information and decision support systems development, management, implementation and evaluation, as well as to researchers/practitioners in organizational analysis and development, management and business administration, sociology and psychology of organizations, human relations and human factors management.

As the most comprehensive reference work dealing with decision support systems (DSS), this book is essential for the library of every DSS practitioner, researcher, and educator. Written by an international array of DSS luminaries, it contains more than 70 chapters that approach decision support systems from a wide variety of perspectives. These range from classic foundations to cutting-edge thought, informative to provocative, theoretical to practical, historical to futuristic, human to technological, and operational to strategic. The chapters are conveniently organized into ten major sections that novices and experts alike will refer to for years to come.

This research aimed to explore decision support in mobile, knowledge based, time critical environments involving ill-defined decision situations. The research was concerned with how decision makers in such environments made their decisions and whether/how the decision making process could be supported by knowledge based decision support technology. The aim presented within the thesis is to ascertain the necessary components of a decision support system capable of incorporating contextual knowledge, real time context modelling and providing useful decision support for ill-defined decision situations. A design science research methodology was adopted for the research. This methodology incorporated researching the domain, knowledge acquisition, artefact development in the form of a prototype, and a qualitative evaluation of the system's feasibility and potential usefulness in a particular context. The research utilised decision support, mobile technology and knowledge acquisition concepts, and of particular importance, the areas of context sensitive decision support and advisory systems to develop the prototype. This research developed a new approach towards decision support within the target problem domain. This approach involved utilising context sensitive decision support techniques to represent expert knowledge in a generalised form. This knowledge was then incorporated within a mobile advisory system prototype to address the time critical nature of the target domain. Hospital triage was selected as an example of the time critical problem domain. Expert knowledge was obtained from triage nurses, which was not otherwise detailed in official triage documentation. The prototype system was developed to explore the implementation of the approach and acquired knowledge. Triage nurses were also involved in a qualitative evaluation of the prototype mobile decision support system. The evaluation was aimed at establishing the importance of the contextual components of the system and its suitability within the triage environment. Feedback from the evaluation suggested domain experts' approval of this form of decision support. Comments issued indicate decision support in this form could be of benefit for triage nurses to support their decisions with specific experiential knowledge. The domain experts also indicated that this form of support would be most beneficial for trainee triage nurses whose lack of experience necessitates additional guidance. Another potential application was suggested for the purpose of education of staff in specific knowledge of medical triage. This research contributes to the theory and practice of development of knowledge based mobile decision support systems within such domains where domain knowledge is critical but not well documented. The implementation of generalised guiding contextual rules was found to be useful within a mobile and time critical environment involving ill-defined decision situations. The generalised contextual rules provided safe decision support and in a form that would have minimal impact on the time taken to make decisions. The key concepts within the system which addressed the research questions are generalised contextual rules, context management objects, and an interface that presents guiding information to address time constraints in mobile decision support environment.

This volume of Annals of Information Systems will acknowledge the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the International Society for Decision Support Systems (ISDSS) by documenting some of the current best practices in teaching and research and envisioning the next twenty years in the decision support systems field. The volume is intended to complement existing DSS literature by offering an outlet for thoughts and research particularly suited to the theme of describing the next twenty years in the area of decision support. Several subthemes are planned for the volume. One subtheme draws on the assessments of internationally known DSS researchers to evaluate where the field has been and what has been accomplished. A second subtheme of the volume will be describing the current best practices of DSS research and teaching efforts. A third subtheme will be an assessment by top DSS scholars on where the DSS discipline needs to focus in the future. The tone of this volume is one of enthusiasm for the potential contributions to come in the area of DSS; contributions that must incorporate an understanding of what has been accomplished in the past, build on the best practices of today, and be integrated into future decision making practices.

This open access book comprehensively covers the fundamentals of clinical data science, focusing on data collection, modelling and clinical applications. Topics covered in the first section on data collection include: data sources, data at scale (big data), data stewardship (FAIR data) and related privacy concerns. Aspects of predictive modelling using techniques such as classification, regression or clustering, and prediction model validation will be covered in the second section. The third section covers aspects of (mobile) clinical decision support systems, operational excellence and value-based healthcare. Fundamentals of Clinical Data Science is an essential resource for healthcare professionals and IT consultants intending to develop and refine their skills in personalized medicine, using solutions based on large datasets from electronic health records or telemonitoring programmes. The book’s promise is “no math, no code”and will explain the topics in a style that is optimized for a healthcare audience.

This book will be bought by researchers and graduates students in Artificial Intelligence and management as well as practising managers and consultants interested in the application of IT and information systems in real business environment.

The digital transformation of healthcare delivery remains a work in progress, and contextual variation continues to be one of the barriers to the development of sustainable health information technology. Context-sensitive health informatics concerns health information technologies and their environments, which may be people such as patients, users, designers and evaluators, but also non-human constructs such as organizations, work practices, guidelines and protocols, or buildings and markets. This book presents papers from CSHI 2019, the international conference on Context Sensitive Health Informatics, held in Lille, France, on 23 and 24 August 2019. The subtitle of the conference was Sustainability in Dynamic Ecosystems, and the thirty papers included here are divided into six sections: understanding organizational contexts; towards sustainable EHR; different contexts for medication errors and patient safety; methods and models to study contexts for health information systems; citizens in health contexts; and designing and evaluating in contexts. Two keynote speeches from the conference are also included. With its focus on context sensitivity and sustainability in digital healthcare, the book will be of interest to all those working in the field of health informatics.