Suchergebnisse

The Living Lab paradigm creates open and inter-disciplinary environments where participants can interrogate challenges and co-create solutions. A successful Living Lab context incorporates a clear focus/vision, strong leadership, self-sustainability, a strong sense of community-owned challenges and the potential for sustainable community development. This paper discusses and outlines the elements of Living Labs, and how these have played a role in the establishment of a new Education Living Lab at a University in South Africa. Core values, stakeholders and key success factors of Living Labs are discussed. This is followed by the description of a case study of the establishment process of a Living Lab. The newly established Living Lab already shows success with collaborations and innovation between communities, industry, academia, learners and schools. This is illustrated in an application of the discussions on the Mobile Learning focus area - the first active sub-focus area within the Education Living Lab.

This article presents a scoping review of digital open badge ecosystems. A scoping review can be seen as a methodology for systematically assessing the breadth of available research literature. This article is aimed at identifying the nature, extent and current understanding of digital open badge ecosystems. Scoping reviews follow many of the same methodological steps as systematic reviews where the reliability of results and the potential for replication remain essential. As such, this review follows the eight steps outlined by Okoli and Schabram. From the 1608 studies identified, 41 were considered relevant for inclusion criteria and thus included in a final sample. Some relevant websites and the so-called grey literature were included. These were evaluated according to the inclusion criteria and were categorised. Further subcategories were identified which include the notion of digital badges (n = 35) and open digital badges (n = 18), elements of a digital open badge ecosystem (n = 27) and reported implementations (n = 29). The scoping review presents a literature repository that can be used by practitioners and researchers interested in the application of digital open badges for the establishment of a digital open badge ecosystem. The review also serves to highlight the potential benefits this can have for resource-constrained environments.

Although e-health can potentially facilitate the management of scarce resources and improve the quality of healthcare services, implementation of e-health programs continues to fail or not fulfil expectations. A key contributor to the failure of e-health implementation in rural hospitals is poor quality management of projects. Based on a survey 35 participants from five rural hospitals in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, and using a qualitative case study research methodology, this article attempted to answer the question: does the adoption of quality assurance (QA) models add value and help to ensure success of information technology projects, especially in rural health settings? The study identified several weaknesses in the application of QA in these hospitals; however, findings also showed that the QA methods used, in spite of not being formally applied in a standardised manner, did nonetheless contribute to the success of some projects. The authors outline a generic quality assurance model (GQAM), developed to enhance the potential for successful acquisition of e-health solutions in rural hospitals, in order to improve the quality of care and service delivery in these hospitals.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions (e.g. e-health, telemedicine, e-education) are often viewed as vehicles to bridge the digital divide between rural and urban healthcare centres and to resolve shortcomings in the rural health sector. This study focused on factors perceived to influence the uptake and use of ICTs as e-health solutions in selected rural Eastern Cape healthcare centres, and on structural variables relating to these facilities and processes. Attention was also given to two psychological variables that may underlie an individual's acceptance and use of ICTs: usefulness and ease of use. Recommendations are made with regard to how ICTs can be used more effectively to improve health systems at five rural healthcare centres where questionnaire and interview data were collected: St. Lucy's Hospital, Nessie Knight Hospital, the Tsilitwa Clinic, the Madzikane Ka-Zulu Memorial Hospital and the Nelson Mandela General Hospital.

This companion-discussion paper advocates the need for a quality assurance model for successful acquisition of e-health solutions in rural healthcare centres. We argue that the quality of the entire system is highly influenced by the quality of the processes used to acquire, develop, implement and maintain it. Central to these processes is the incorporation of user participation that adopts a 'bottom-up' rather than a 'top-down' approach. We present a selection of literature of relevance to the research work in progress, with a view to understanding ways in which quality assurance methodologies can be used to add value and ensure high quality care and service delivery in rural South Africa.

Rising patient demands, a growing population, and resource limitations constrain the South African healthcare system. The integration of disparate interventions that are developed and implemented across various actors in healthcare value chains (VCs) remains a significant challenge. This calls for a multi-disciplinary approach to integrate the knowledge of communities, non-governmental organisations, private sector actors, frontline healthcare workers, and researchers in the development of sustainable, value-adding interventions. Multi-stakeholder engagement, in this article referred to as innovation platforms (IPs), is a mechanism through which interdependent VC actors could be organised and coordinated to develop sustainable innovations to strengthen the healthcare system. This article addresses the lack of guidance on how to develop and operate healthcare IPs in South Africa by presenting a framework for IP formation and functioning in healthcare VCs. A grounded theory approach, namely conceptual framework analysis, informed framework development within an exploratory qualitative study. The outcome of the study is an innovation management tool for improved policy development in a developing country context. It provides practical guidance to policy makers on how to: (1) Setup and develop an IP; (2) Implement interventions to improve IP functioning; and (3) Develop mechanisms to address commonly experienced challenges.