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Aim Because the field of information systems (IS) research is vast and diverse, structuring it is a necessary precondition for any further analysis of artefacts. To structure research fields, taxonomies are a useful tool. Approaches aiming to develop sound taxonomies exist, but they do not focus on empirical development. We aimed to close this gap by providing the CAFE methodology, which is based on quantitative content analysis. Subject and methods Existing taxonomies are used to build a coding scheme, which is then validated on an IS project database. After describing the methodology, it is applied to develop a telemedicine taxonomy. Results The CAFE methodology consists of four steps, including applicable methods. It helps in producing quantitative data for statistical analysis to empirically ground any newly developed taxonomy. By applying the methodology, a taxonomy for telemedicine is presented, including, e.g. application types, settings or the technology involved in telemedicine initiatives. Conclusion Taxonomies can serve in identifying both components and outcomes to analyse. As such, our empirically sound methodology for deriving those is a contribution not only to evaluation research but also to the development of future successful telemedicine or other digital applications.

Integrated care is said to improve the way in which care is delivered. To support integrated care by ensuring close collaboration between involved stakeholders, information and communication technologies, especially telemedicine, are needed. Despite their potential, most telemedicine solutions never make it from pilot project stage to full implementation into usual care. Especially in integrated care scenarios, understanding of the barriers hampering successful telemedicine implementation and application is limited. Four rapid scoping reviews were carried out to cover the following broad sets of barriers in telemedicine implementation: technical, behavioural, economical and organisational barriers. The identified barriers and obstacles were categorised into problem areas with sub-categories and, afterwards, combined in order to identify future research potentials for telemedicine implementation. A total of 118 studies were included for further analysis. The findings suggest that the individuals’ characteristics, as well as the surrounding social and health care system, are the most important barriers for telemedicine-supported integrated care. The information system development and application, as well as missing data and evidence for the effectiveness of telemedicine and integrated care, are hampering successful implementation. The consolidated problem areas deepen the understanding on how barriers for telemedicine solutions in integrated care settings are interrelated. Conclusively, this helps to successfully develop and implement telemedicine-supported integrated care.

Based on the lessons learnt from the co-design, development and integration processes, the research findings and the outputs from the engagement with a network of stakeholders over the course of the EU funded initiatives, this chapter will aim to help sketching the future policies and research funding programmes for ageing well in Europe. The chapter presents the visions and the perspectives of the running projects in the frame of the H2020 Personalized Medicine-15 call.

Home-based rehabilitation after an acute episode or following an exacerbation of a chronic disease is often problematic with a clear lack of continuity of care between hospital and home care. Secondary prevention is an essential element of long-term rehabilitation where strategies oriented toward risk reduction, treatment adherence, and optimization of quality of life need to be applied. Frail and sometimes isolated, the patient fails to adhere to the proposed post-discharge clinical pathway due to lack of appropriate clinical, emotional, and informational support. Providing a suitable rehabilitation after an acute episode or a chronic disease is a major issue, as it helps people to live independently and enhance their quality of life. However, as the rehabilitation period usually lasts some months, the continuity of care is often interrupted in the transition from hospital to home. Virtual coaches could help these patients to engage in a personalized rehabilitation program that complies with age-related conditions. These coaches could be a key technology for empowering patients toward increasing their adherence to the care plan and to improve their secondary prevention measures. In this paper, we are presenting a novel virtual coaching system that will address these challenges by combining recent technological advances with clinical pathways, based on joint research and validation activities from researchers from the medical and information and communication technology (ICT) domains.

Telemedicine maturity models aim to support telemedicine scaling up. Even though a diversity of telemedicine maturity models, and further support tools, exist, they are often unable to support users proactively or offer substantial guidance for the improvement of the status quo. A new maturity model is therefore needed that overcomes the shortcomings evident in existing approaches. This chapter aims to identify requirements that such a model has to fulfil based on an analysis of existing maturity models. The results guide future research and can support the scaling up of telemedicine initiatives.

The active integration of a patient into his/her own care process offers great potentials for improving care quality. With this regard, patient portals are frequently referenced for enabling patient integration. Existing solutions primarily focus on the access to electronic health records but do not aim for the integration of cross institutional information about the course of treatment itself - known as patient pathway. Thus, this paper proposes a reference architecture for the integration of pathway systems into patient portals. High-level requirements have been captured from both a user's perspective and a theory perspective. Therefore, a large-scale patient survey was conducted within a general design science research approach. They were transformed into appropriate modules and components of a reference architecture. Its applicability is demonstratively shown by the development of a patient portal for Multiple Sclerosis patients.

Medical guidelines have become established as the standard for the comprehensive synopsis of all available information (scientific trials, expert opinion) on diagnosis and treatment recommendations. The transfer of guidelines to clinical practice and subsequent monitoring has however proven difficult. In particular the potential interaction between guideline developers and guideline users has not been fully utilised. This review article analyses the status quo and existing methodological and technical information solutions supporting the guideline life cycle. It is shown that there are numerous innovative developments that in isolation do not provide comprehensive support. The vision of the "Living Guidelines 2.0" is therefore presented. This outlines the merging of guideline development and implementation on the basis of clinical pathways and guideline-based quality control, and building on this, the generation of information for guideline development and research.Medizinische Leitlinien haben sich als Standard zur Aggregation der gesamten Informationslage (wissenschaftliche Studien, Expertenmeinungen) zu Diagnose- und Therapieempfehlungen etabliert. Die Überführung und Überwachung der Empfehlungen in die Praxis erweisen sich jedoch als schwierig. Vor allem wird das Interaktionspotenzial zwischen Leitlinienentwicklern und -anwendern bisher nicht ausgeschöpft. Der Beitrag analysiert die aktuelle Situation sowie bestehende methodische und informationstechnische Lösungen zur Unterstützung des Leitlinienlebenszyklus. Das Ergebnis zeigt, dass es eine Vielzahl innovativer Entwicklungen gibt, diese jedoch als Insellösungen keine ganzheitliche Unterstützung ermöglichen. In der vorliegenden Übersichtsarbeit wird daher die Vision der „Living Guidelines 2.0“ vorgestellt. Sie umreißt das Zusammenwachsen von Leitlinienentwicklung und der Implementierung dieser auf Basis klinischer Behandlungspfade sowie leitlinienbasierter Qualitätssicherung und darauf aufbauender Informationsgenerierung für Leitlinienentwicklung und Forschung.

The usage of clinical pathways to describe and organize the treatment of patients in inter-sectoral care has been established through the last decade. In particular, engaging the patient in the treatment process has become more important. Adequate tools and concepts are needed to improve the integration of patients into inter-sectorial care processes. Personalized dynamic pathways form patient-specific extensions for clinical pathways as a flexible instrument that goes beyond traditional application of pathways. They support customizing care for patient-specific requirements as well as adding patient interaction to the care process. This paper adapts the concept of personalized dynamic pathways and proposes a reference architecture for integrating personalized dynamic pathways into existing inter-organizational healthcare information systems.

Part 6: Research in Progress and Practice; International audience; Governance and compliance of health care networks gain more and more attention in the IS research. The configuration of medical care workflow systems and the compliance check of care processes according to national and international guidelines is the motivation for this paper. We are following a process model based approach for the management of health care networks. We present a service-based method for the compliance check of process models and enable a configuration of information systems with process models. The application of the method as well as the discussion of the practical benefits is illustrated by a real world case.

vCare is designing personalized rehabilitation programs that will lead to better continuity of care and a better quality of life for patients with stroke, heart failure, Parkinson’s disease or ischemic heart disease. It’s goal is to provide a holistic approach for transferring rehabilitation pathways from stationary rehabilitation to the patient’s home. VCare persues two novel approaches in the field. First, it combines persuasive system design (PSD) with a health psychological model (IMB) which are implemented into a software system to motivate the user. Second, it integrates personalized rehabilitation paths and a virtual coach with graphical representation to support the rehabilitation process. The coach is based on patients’ personalized care pathways. It engages with patients so that they meet their individual care plans. This encourages compliance with the patients’ rehabilitation programs.