Impact Of E-Business On Healthcare: Risks, Benefits, And Changes - An Essay.

Your main report should have a bibliography and reference section in a recognised academic style (e.g. Harvard referencing).  List all sources, including ideas and suggestions taken from others.  All words, diagrams, etc. taken from another source must be properly marked in the text and listed in the references.

1. An original question about e-business that would be worth further research 

• This section is concerned only with defining the problem/.question.
• Include a short paragraph that explains why it is interesting and a page of plan / research method that shows how your question could be answered.
• Your idea can be interesting for its own sake – pure research. Or it might be useful to a specified organisation – applied research.

2. A report to a senior manager of a real organisation on one of the following

Positive Impacts of E-Business

XYZ is a healthcare firm that has been in the business since past 18 years. The firm started with providing basic health care and services to the patients. It has now turned in a multi-speciality unit and the need of e-business has now emerged to provide better health facilities. The company has therefore, decided to step in the e-business world with the development of an electronic smart health system. Currently, there are various issues that the patients face in terms of longer waiting hours, multiple visits to the firm to consult a medical professional, higher costs of treatment, and likewise. The e-health system will be design to target such issues and to provide convenient services to the patients and to the medical professionals as well. The report covers the impact, benefits, changes, and risks associated with the proposed e-business capability and the measures to handle the same.

The research is significant as it will provide an organization with the information on the strategies and plans they shall follow to implement e-business capabilities in the form of an e-health system. The research will highlight the positive and negative aspects of e-business so that the resulting consequences are beneficial.

• What are the impacts of proposed e-business solution on the organization?
• What will be the changes introduced and what strategies/phases shall be followed to manage the changes?
• What will be the benefits of e-business and how will the benefits be measured?
• What are the possible risks associated with the proposed e-business framework and what controls shall be used to treat the risks?

The inclusion of e-business system in the organization will have numerous impacts on the business and the associated stakeholders. Some of the positive impacts are as listed below:

• The number of patients visiting the health care firm for assistance and treatment for minor ailments will be able to utilize the e-business capability for recording their health signs and acquiring the treatment from the medical professional. This will also reduce the waiting time for the patients visiting the centers.
• The time of care will be quick and as per the need of the patient (Minichiello et al., 2013).
• The health care firm will be able to set its mark in the increased number of locations without worrying about the availability of the medical professionals.
• The medical professionals will have the electronic version of the patient history and health conditions. There will be no issues of data loss and leakage that currently exist. The legal and regulatory policies will be adhered to.
• With the ability to provide better health services, the organization will be able to gain competitive edge in the market (Menachemi, 2011).

There may also be a few negative impacts with the use of e-business capability. The implementation of e-health system will launch various changes for the medical professionals and the employees of the health care firm and for the patients as well. The absence of a change management plan may lead to difficulties in handling the newer set of operations. There will be security risks and concerns that will also emerge. The occurrence of such issues may lead to legal obligations along with the deterioration of the customer trust.

The e-health system is the first of an e-business capability that will be implemented in the organization. There will be various changes in the infrastructure that will be required. These changes will include the need of deploying network topologies and architecture to support the e-health system. The technologies used will be wireless technologies as Wi-Fi for communication and transmission and system will be based on Internet of Things (IoT). There will be computer systems, tele-conferencing mediums, laptops, Smartphones, sensors, databases, and data analytics tools needed. The system will be integrated with the health monitoring and recoding tools and the wearables will also be provided to the patients.

Negative Impacts of E-Business

There will be migration of services, equipment, and data sets done go have positive impacts of the introduction of the system and handling the changes. 

The plan has been developed to list the methodology and steps that shall be used to move the current facilities, services, and data to the e-business framework.

Migration Approach

The methodology that will be followed to implement and move to the e-business functionality shall utilize phased approach. There shall be steps carried out to achieve the final results rather than carrying out all the activities at one go. The research method is qualitative analysis which will be applied in the migration phases as well. Management will be done through Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK).

The setting up and implementation of the e-health system that has been proposed must begin with the analysis of the highlights of the e-business model. The business model that will be followed in this case will be Business to Consumer (B2C). The feasibility study of the e-business model with respect to the system shall be done on the technical and operational aspects. The compatibility of the system being proposed shall also be done with the rest of the technical tools being used in the health care frim (Jamali and Oveisi, 2016).

The next phase shall be the planning phase in which the requirements of the e-health system must be documented on the basis of the business case and the results of the feasibility study. There shall be data collection methods carried out so that the requirements are correctly defined. The planning phase must also comprise of the estimation of the schedule for the design, development, and deployment of e-health system along with the determination of its costs. Planning on the risks, communication mechanisms, and resources would be done in this phase so that the migration is done adequately.

The e-health system will be designed and developed in this phase of the migration process. These activities will be done alongside the migration. The e-health system will include the information and data sets associated with the health care firm and the patients (Rose, 2013).

The integration of the existing and new services will be done along with that of the health monitoring tools and equipment.

This is the phase in which various testing activities will be carried out to validate and verify the system for successful deployment and migration.

• System Integration Tests: The e-health system proposed for the organization will be tested on the basis of the functional, non-functional, and user requirements. The bugs associated with the system functionalities will be reported in this step (Baresi and Pezze, 2006).
• Performance Tests: The patients will desire that the system shall provide them with the health information on the real-time basis. There will be communication options present in the system to allow the patients to interact with their respective medical professionals. Load balancing will be verified along with the response time (Indiver, 2016).  
• Security Tests: There may be a number of security risks and attacks that may be given shape by the malevolent entities. The testing process will determine all of such security issues to control the same.

The e-business capability being developed for the health care firm will be required to be monitored by the technical experts and management. The review and inspection procedures must be executed to ensure that there are no deviations and the migration is done correctly. The implementation of e-health system will launch various changes for the medical professionals and the employees of the health care firm and for the patients as well. The absence of a change management plan may lead to difficulties in handling the newer set of operations. Thus, a change management plan will be required for the system and the migration processes. The plan shall include the details on methodology, planning, management, and reinforcement.

Proposed E-Health System

This is the phase that will mark the end of the process of migration and handling the changes. The final reviews will be done in this phase along with the submission of a detailed closure report. The activities covered by the members in the project team must also be documented and the lessons acquired shall be listed out.

The number of patients visiting the health care firm for assistance and treatment for minor ailments will be able to utilize the e-business capability for recording their health signs and acquiring the treatment from the medical professional. This will also reduce the waiting time for the patients visiting the centres. The time of care will be quick and as per the need of the patient. The health care firm will be able to set its mark in the increased number of locations without worrying about the availability of the medical professionals (Ohno-Machado, 2014). The medical professionals will have the electronic version of the patient history and health conditions. There will be no issues of data loss and leakage that currently exist. The legal and regulatory policies will be adhered to. With the ability to provide better health services, the organization will be able to gain competitive edge in the market.  

There will be certain critical success factors and performance indicators used to measure the benefits of the system.

• Customer (Patient) Feedback: The system will have the option of feedback that the end-users may utilize and provide their ratings and comments on the system. The net rating of 8 and above on a scale of 10 will indicate the success of the system as it will be able to provide the due benefits.
• Profits and Revenues: The quarterly assessment of the profits and revenues of the system will be done
• Data Reports: The data reports will be extracted from the system along with the system logs to understand the deviations involved (Yanamadala et al., 2016).
• Market Shares: The market shares of the organization will go up as a result of the introduction of the e-health system.
• Number of Application Downloads & Registered Users: The e-health system application will be made available on the online marketplaces. The number of app downloads along with the higher number of registered patients will be an indication of the benefits.

There are five different phases that have been listed in the migration plan in the section above. There are a few risks and issues associated with each of these phases and the overall project as well.

The primary set of risks associated with the system is the security risks and attacks. The e-business capability in the form of e-health system will be implemented in the health care organization as first of its kinds. This may lead to increased number of security weaknesses and vulnerabilities that may go untreated. Some of the security risks and attacks that may come up as an outcome may include malware attacks, denial of service attacks, data breaches, integrity violations, and man in the middle attacks (Taylor, 2015).

Every step in the design, development, deployment, and migration will have a few critical issues that shall be carefully carried out failing which there may be risks that may emerge. The first phase is the initiation phase in which the business case must be presented to the project team and the feasibility analysis shall be done. Communication risks may come up in this phase as inadequate communication or availability issues may set up a weaker base for the project.

Methodology

There will be data collection, analysis, and planning & estimation activities carried out in the second phase of the project. The estimations will be required to be done adequately so that the team succeeds in achieving the expected targets. The ineffective setting up of the schedule and budget may lead to the issues of overrun in the advanced stages. Also, non-adherence to the quality standards may also lead to user dissatisfaction.

The third step in the process will be the execution phase in which the codes and designs will be developed for the e-health system and the migration activities will also be done for the services and for the data sets. These activities will involve a number of technical tools and equipment. Faults and glitches in these tools may lead to the delay in the execution of the services and project activities. Also, this phase will be extremely exposed to the security risks and attacks. The internal employees responsible for carrying out with the development activities will be provided with some production data as well. The improper handling of the confidential and sensitive data sets by the internal resources may put the information at risk.

There may also be ethical and legal issues observed in the execution and further steps in the process. The team members may not adhere to the ethical and legal policies and norms (Adam, Aderet and Sadeh, 2007). There will also be various changes that the e-business capability will bring in for the organization. The changes in the initial set of requirements along with the changes introduced for the medical professionals and other members of the staff will be required to be properly managed. In case of mismanagement, there may be risks of requirement inflation and reduced resource productivity witnessed.

The following table provides the details of every risk and the control strategy that shall be used to treat the same.

Risk Name	Nature of the Risk	Risk Probability (1 to 5 with 5 being highest on the scale)	Risk Impact (1 to 5 with 5 being highest on the scale)	Risk Rank	Risk Treatment Strategy
Security Risks and Attacks	The nature of the risk is negative due to the negative consequences	4	5	20	Risk Avoidance: The e-health system must have security protocols and services integrated in it to protect the health information of the patients. The employees must not be provided with the production data. It shall only be accessible to senior resources.
Communication Issues	The nature of the risk is negative due to the negative consequences	3	4	12	Risk Avoidance: The schedule of the conference calls and meetings will the external and internal stakeholders must be shared in advance. There shall also be communication plan and guidelines set up so that the availability is not an issue.
Schedule/Budget Overrun	The nature of the risk is negative due to the negative consequences	2	5	10	Risk Avoidance: The resources from the top level management must monitor the project status and its progress by carrying out audits and inspections. Earned Value Management (EVM) must be used for calculating the cost and schedule variance.
Technical Glitches	The nature of the risk is negative due to the negative consequences	3	3	9	Risk Transfer: The technical tools and equipment used in the project will be supplied by external suppliers. They shall be handed over with the responsibility to resolve the technical faults.
Requirements Inflation	The nature of the risk is negative due to the negative consequences	3	4	12	Risk Avoidance: The changes in the system must be highlighted after every project activity through the feedback process with the client and the other stakeholders. A defined change management plan shall also be used.
Ethical Risks	The nature of the risk is negative due to the negative consequences	2	5	10	Risk Avoidance: There shall be trainings provided to the employees to adhere to the ethical norms and principles. Also, the ethical reviews and inspections must be done on a regular basis.
Legal Obligations	The nature of the risk is negative due to the negative consequences	1	5	5	Risk Avoidance: There shall be trainings provided to the employees to adhere to the legal norms and principles. Also, the legal reviews and inspections must be done on a regular basis.
Drop in Resource Productivity	The nature of the risk is negative due to the negative consequences	2	4	8	Risk Avoidance: The employees of the organization shall be assessed on their performance in every quarter and through the status reports. The management must carry out interactions with the resources to find out their problems.

References

Adam, A., Aderet, A. and Sadeh, A. (2007). Do Ethics Matter to E-Consumers?. Journal of Internet Commerce, 6(2), pp.19-34.

Baresi, L. and Pezze, M. (2006). An Introduction to Software Testing. Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science, 148(1), pp.89-111.

Indiver, S. (2016). New Soft Computing Techniques in the Software Testing. International Journal Of Engineering And Computer Science.

Jamali, G. and Oveisi, M. (2016). A Study on Project Management Based on PMBOK and PRINCE2. [online] Available at: https://dx.doi.org/10.5539/mas.v10n6p142 [Accessed 21 May 2018].

Menachemi, N. (2011). Benefits and drawbacks of electronic health record systems. Risk Management and Healthcare Policy, p.47.

Minichiello, V., Rahman, S., Dune, T., Scott, J. and Dowsett, G. (2013). E-health: potential benefits and challenges in providing and accessing sexual health services. BMC Public Health, 13(1).

Ohno-Machado, L. (2014). Electronic health record systems: risks and benefits. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 21(e1), pp.e1-e1.

Rose, K. (2013). A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide)-Fifth Edition. Project Management Journal, 44(3), pp.e1-e1.

Taylor, R. (2015). Potential Problems with Information Security Risk Assessments. Information Security Journal: A Global Perspective, 24(4-6), pp.177-184.

Yanamadala, S., Morrison, D., Curtin, C., McDonald, K. and Hernandez-Boussard, T. (2016). Electronic Health Records and Quality of Care. Medicine, 95(19), p.e3332.