Abstract
An influenza pandemic or outbreak of unknown respiratory disease can increase morbidity
and mortality levels and, as a result, cause social disruption and economic losses. e-Health,
an application of information and communication technologies (ICT) across the whole range
of functions which affect health, may mitigate the impact of a pandemic by facilitating
pandemic surveillance and control activities, and improving performance of medical
practices. The implementation of e-health requires proper planning and management. e-
Health preparedness assessment represents an important step in change management, and
including this step in its planning process increases the chances of its implementation
success.
This thesis presents an e-health preparedness assessment model for a pandemic (eHPM4P)
which was newly developed and also reports the results of the model s operationalization in
healthcare settings. Throughout the project, a three-phase methodology was utilised: 1) a
systematic literature review was conducted to identify e-health preparedness components,
which led to the conceptual development of an initial e-health preparedness model; 2) the
initial model was validated and enhanced using 20 contextual interviews with domain
experts. The enhancement involved the quantification of the preparedness constructs by
applying the graph theory and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP); and 3) the enhanced
model (eHPM4P) was operationalized by case studies at two hospitals within different
cultures.
This PhD project contributes to the body of knowledge on change management for clinical
ICT innovations. The eHPM4P would be useful for practically assessing an organisation s
preparedness status if the organisation plans to implement an e-health system. The
assessment results may assist decision makers at the organisation to take action to address
deficient areas in their preparedness and thus facilitate the e-health implementation s
success. These results may also provide policy makers at national, state and local levels with
empirical evidence and insights in order to refine relevant public health policies for the
planning and management of pandemics from the ICT perspective. The last chapter of the
thesis suggests future studies for further investigation in this research area.